Ruby wrapper for the Sunlight Congress API

The Sunlight Congress API is a live JSON API for the people and work of Congress, provided by the Sunlight Foundation.

Installation

gem install congress

To ensure the code you're installing hasn't been tampered with, it's recommended that you verify the signature. To do this, you need to add my public key as a trusted certificate (you only need to do this once):

gem cert --add <(curl -Ls https://raw.github.com/codeforamerica/congress/master/certs/sferik.pem)

Then, install the gem with the high security trust policy:

gem install congress -P HighSecurity

Documentation

http://rdoc.info/gems/congress

Authentication

All requests to the Congress API require a Sunlight API key. An API key is free to register and has no usage limits.

Usage Examples

Setup

require 'congress'
Congress.key = YOUR_SUNLIGHT_API_KEY

Congress.legislators

Fetch representatives and senators for a latitude/longitude or zip code

Congress.legislators_locate(37.775, -122.418)
Congress.legislators_locate(94107)

Fetch congressional districts for a latitude/longitude or zip code

Congress.districts_locate(37.775, -122.418)
Congress.districts_locate(94107)

Fetch current committees, subcommittees, and their membership

Congress.committees

Fetch legislation in the House and Senate

Congress.bills

Congress.bills_search(:query => "health care")

Fetch roll call votes in Congress

Congress.votes

Fetch to-the-minute updates from the floor of the House and Senate

Congress.floor_updates

Fetch committee hearings in Congress

Congress.hearings

Fetch bills scheduled for debate in the future, as announced by party leadership

Congress.upcoming_bills

Contributing

In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.

Here are some ways you can contribute:

by using alpha, beta, and prerelease versions
by reporting bugs
by suggesting new features
by writing or editing documentation
by writing specifications
by writing code (no patch is too small: fix typos, add comments, clean up inconsistent whitespace)
by refactoring code
by fixing issues
by reviewing patches

Submitting an Issue

We use the GitHub issue tracker to track bugs and features. Before submitting a bug report or feature request, check to make sure it hasn't already been submitted. When submitting a bug report, please include a [Gist][] that includes a stack trace and any details that may be necessary to reproduce the bug, including your gem version, Ruby version, and operating system. Ideally, a bug report should include a pull request with failing specs.

Submitting a Pull Request

Fork the repository.
Create a topic branch.
Add specs for your unimplemented feature or bug fix.
Run bundle exec rake spec. If your specs pass, return to step 3.
Implement your feature or bug fix.
Run bundle exec rake spec. If your specs fail, return to step 5.
Run open coverage/index.html. If your changes are not completely covered by your tests, return to step 3.
Add documentation for your feature or bug fix.
Run bundle exec rake yard. If your changes are not 100% documented, go back to step 8.
Add, commit, and push your changes.
Submit a pull request.

Supported Rubies

This library aims to support and is tested against the following Ruby implementations:

Ruby 1.8.7
Ruby 1.9.2
Ruby 1.9.3
Ruby 2.0.0
JRuby
Rubinius

If something doesn't work on one of these interpreters, it should be considered a bug.

This library may inadvertently work (or seem to work) on other Ruby implementations, however support will only be provided for the versions listed above.

If you would like this library to support another Ruby version, you may volunteer to be a maintainer. Being a maintainer entails making sure all tests run and pass on that implementation. When something breaks on your implementation, you will be personally responsible for providing patches in a timely fashion. If critical issues for a particular implementation exist at the time of a major release, support for that Ruby version may be dropped.