SunLightLabs API

SunlightLabs API

people.getDataCondition

Get data according to some condition, say IDs of all senators or IDs of all democrats

These are the different types of things that one can create a condition around:

Name	Description
CRPcandID	The candidate ID used by the Center For Responsive politics.
URL	The person's or entity's website
state_full_name	The full name of a state, e.g. "North Dakota"
state_abbreviation	The abbreviation of a state's name, e.g. "CA"
district	The integer value of a representative's district, e.g., "6"
WashPost_ID	Washington Post's ID for this person
party	The person's party, i.e. "D", "R" or "I'
VoteSmart_ID	The ID used by Project Vote Smart (http://votesmart.org/index.htm)
title	A person's title, e.g. "Representative" or "Senator"
member110congress	Is/Was the person a member of the 110th Congress?, i.e., "yes" or "no"
FEC_ID	FEC's ID for this person
webform	A contact webform for this person
email	Email for this person
senator_class	Class for this person (Senator): I, II, or III
phone	Phone number
name_suffix	Name Suffix, e.g. "Jr." or "II"
congress_office	Address of their Congressional Office, e.g. "1502 Longworth HOB, Washington, DC 20515-1101"
gender	Gender: "M" or "F"
photo	The filename for their photo at http://sunlightlabs.com/widgets/popuppoliticians/resources/images/
congresspedia	The URL for their Congresspedia page
BioGuide_ID	ID for their BioGuide entry at http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp
Eventful_ID	The performer ID for an Eventful politician
lastname	Last Name(s)
firstname	First Name(s)
middlename	Middle Names(s)
nickname	Nickname
GovTrack_ID	The ID used by Govtrack.us
entity_id	The common id being promoted by the labs

Arguments

These are all $_GET parameters.

parameter name (required)

One of the field names listed above. That is, ?[one of the names above] = [some value]

apikey (required)

your individual API key

metadata (optional)

&metadata=true provides detail about source, last update of the information etc. Click here for details

output (optional)

&output=json is set by default. You can also use &output=xml

Example Call

http://www.api.sunlightlabs.com/people.getDataCondition.php?party=D
&apikey=23kj234kjb3kjbcl87ds

says give me IDs of all democrats.

Another example:

http://api.sunlightlabs.com/people.getDataCondition.php?state_full_name=alaska
&apikey=23kj234kjb3kjbcl87ds

says give me IDs of all people related to Alaska.

Example Response

For the default JSON:

{ "condition": "state_full_name=alaska", "entity_ids": [ "fakeopenID434", "fakeopenID506" ,"fakeopenID525" ] }

For XML:

<results>
  <condition>state_full_name=alaska</condition>
  <entity_id_list>
    <entity_id>fakeopenID434</entity_id>
    <entity_id>fakeopenID506</entity_id>
    <entity_id>fakeopenID525</entity_id>
  </entity_id_list>
</results>

Error Codes

If there is an error: a plain text string will be returned:

0: no data

This means that the code was recognized but there was no data for that matched that criterion.

100: invalid API key

The API key was invalid

101: API key not valid for this method

Not permitted to call this particular method with this particular API key

200: invalid input code

The parameter did not match one of the codes above