Open 13

Open13 is a project to collect information on provincial legislatures in Canada, including legislators, bills, votes, committees, events and speeches. This data is made available through a website and its API.

Dependencies

You need Python 2.7 or greater. Install Git and virtualenv to create isolated Python development environments. Restart your shell after running the commands below.

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install git virtualenvwrapper python-lxml

If your shell is bash, it should automatically load virtualenvwrapper through /etc/bash_completion.d/virtualenvwrapper.

OS X

Use the Homebrew package manager.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSkL raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"
brew install git
sudo easy_install pip
sudo pip install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
cd $HOME
mkdir .virtualenvs

Have your shell run /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh on login, e.g.:

echo "source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh" >> .bash_login

Or:

echo "source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh" >> .zshrc

Getting Started

Fork the main Git repository on GitHub, clone your fork, and change into its directory:

git clone https://github.com/YOURUSERNAME/open13.git
cd open13

Next, create a development environment. If your version of virtualenv is less than 1.7, omit the --system-site-packages switch:

mkvirtualenv open13 --system-site-packages

Finally, install the requirements:

pip install -r requirements.txt
cp billy_settings.py.example billy_settings.py

You're now ready to work on Open13!

Writing a Scraper

For now, see the OpenStates documentation.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to James Turk, Paul Tagliamonte and Thom Neale of Sunlight Labs's OpenStates team for helping Open North start this project in Canada.

Bugs? Questions?

This project's main repository is on GitHub: http://github.com/opennorth/open13, where your contributions, forks, bug reports, feature requests, and feedback are greatly welcomed.

Copyright (c) 2012 Open North Inc., released under the MIT license