README.csv

Importing the Influence Explorer bulk CSV data
==============================================

http://data.influenceexplorer.com/bulk/ includes many useful data sets
as comma-separated value (CSV) files.  Using these allows offline data
analysis without having an API key, and can allow queries that aren't
supported by the online API.

These scripts include support for importing the CSV data into an
SQLite single-file database.  SQLite support is included in recent
versions of Python; the standard Ubuntu python2.7 package includes the
sqlite3 module.  Other databases could be substituted with fairly
little effort.

I JUST WANT TO USE THIS.  Run 'setupcsv.py'.  This will require you to
download a number of data files, by default into a subdirectory named
'data'.  Download the named files (checking their terms and conditions
first) and run the setup script again.

I WANT TO WRITE PYTHON CODE AGAINST THIS.  import sqlite3 and run from
there; for instance

db = sqlite3.connect('contributions.sqlite')
cursor = db.cursor()
result = cursor.execute("SELECT DISTINCT recipient_name FROM fec")
while True:
  row = result.fetchone()
  if row is None: break
  print row
  pass
db.close()

SQL IS MY FAVORITE LANGUAGE AND I WANT TO LEARN MORE.  Install the
sqlite3 command-line client (e.g., 'apt-get install sqlite3') and then
then run 'sqlite3 contributions.sqlite'.  Run queries to your heart's
content.