Overview:

This repository allows users to run a binary that will generate a CSV file that contains all relevant legislation for a given state.

Requirements:

• git
• Docker
• docker-compose
• An OpenStates API Key.

Usage:

Setup:

git clone [email protected]:jeveleth/bill-scraper.git
cd bill-scraper
export OPENSTATES_API_KEY=your-api-key
docker-compose up --build -d
make build # this might take a few minutes to pull all the necessary docker images

Running the program:

To run the program, pass the search terms particular to your use case. For example, if you wish to find all bills in the 20192020 legislative session for California that contain the phrase "peace officer", run:

docker run --rm -e OPENSTATES_API_KEY=${OPENSTATES_API_KEY} -v \
    $(pwd):/tmp -ti bill-scraper_app:latest ./app \
    -state "California" \
    -session "20192020" \
    -phrase "peace officer" \
    -num-bills 100 \
    run-app

You will then see a file named legislation.csv, which you can import to a Google or Excel spreadsheet. Currently, it contains columns for:

Bill Number
Title
Chamber
Updated
OpenstatesURL
Session
Jurisdiction
Latest Action
Abstract

If you want to run the binary without docker (and you have Go installed), you can build and run by doing:

go build -v -o scraper .
./scraper -state "New York" -session "2019-2020" -phrase "Use of force" -num-bills 20

TODOs:

• format timestamp
• pre-load all search terms