README

@reuters-graphics/us-congressional-atlas

Quick and easy access to meta information about members of U.S. Congress.

Quickstart

$ yarn add @reuters-graphics/us-congressional-atlas

// Import from the library by Congress number and chamber... 
import members from '@reuters-graphics/us-congressional-atlas/congress/117/senate';

/**
 * Get all members 
 */
members.getMembers();
// [ { ... }, { ... }, ... ]

/**
 * Get members by party
 */
members.getRepublicans();
members.getDemocrats(); // Includes independents who caucus with Democrats
members.getOthers();

/**
 * ... or all in one go ...
 */
members.getMembersByParty();
// { republicans: [ ... ], democrats: [ ... ], others: [ ... ] }

/**
 * ... or a shortcut if you just need the totals ...
 */
members.getSeatsByParty();
// { republicans: 50, democrats: 50, others: 0 }

/**
 * Get a single member...
 * 
 * ... using a candidate's name ...
 */
members.getMember('Rand Paul');
// { lastName: 'Paul', ... }

/**
 * ... using a candidate's seat ...
 * - Senate seat: state postal code + Senate class number
 * - House seat: state postal code + congressional district number
 */
members.getMember('KY 3');
// { lastName: 'Paul', ... }


/**
 * ... using a candidate's ID -- any of:
 *   bioguide, govtrack, cspan, votesmart, icpsr,
 *   crp, Google entity or FEC candidate ID
 */
members.getMember('P000603');
// { lastName: 'Paul', ... }

Member data:

{
  id: "P000603",
  title: "Senator, 3rd Class",
  shortTitle: "Sen.",
  firstName: "Rand",
  middleName: null,
  lastName: "Paul",
  suffix: null,
  gender: "M",
  dateOfBirth: "1963-01-07",
  state: "KY",
  stateRank: "junior",
  senateClass: "3",
  party: "R",
  leadershipRole: null,
  nextElection: "2022",
  seniority: "11",
  ids: {
    bioguide: "P000603",
    govtrack: "412492",
    cspan: "9265241",
    votesmart: "117285",
    icpsr: "41104",
    crp: "N00030836",
    googleEntity: "/m/05pdb7q",
    fecCandidate: "S0KY00156"
  },
  images: {
    original: "https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/data/us-congressional-atlas/P000603/original.jpg",
    "225x275": "https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/data/us-congressional-atlas/P000603/225x275.jpg",
    "75x92": "https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/data/us-congressional-atlas/P000603/75x92.jpg",
    "50x50": "https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/data/us-congressional-atlas/P000603/50x50.jpg"
  }
}

Building

Data

Data is pulled from the ProPublica's Congress API. Add your API key to a .env file at the root of this project or export it as the environment variable PROPUBLICA_API_KEY.

The data pulled is driven by the Congress numbers exported in index.js. Add any additional Congresses there and then run:

$ yarn getMembers

Then run tests before you publish:

$ yarn test

Photos

Photos come from the unitedstates project and are resized and published to our own servers during the build.

You can overwrite the photo used by adding it to the images/ directory named by the candidate's bioguide ID, e.g., P000603.jpg.

Once you've added custom photos, be sure to run:

$ yarn getMembers

... which will upload them to AWS. Then update and republish the library with:

$ yarn publish

Testing

$ yarn test

Usage no npm install needed!