CONTRACKER

Interacting with cache database

The cache database holds bulk data regarding politicians. This includes common bio information as well as ids for common databases.

The database can be queried at the /database/ route. By default all columns and records will be returned. An array of rows can be accessed at the req.data.rows property.

Future support is planned for filtering columns and rows.

Everyone will need to set their env.process.DATABASE_URL to the heroku config var.

Interacting with APIs

Proxies have been set up for the major APIs used by the Sunlight Foundation and Open Secets.

OpenSecrets APIs

The OpenSecret API is accessed via GET requests to the /opensecrets/ route. Query parameters should be sent to this route per the OpenSecrets API documentation.

DO NOT include the apikey parameter. The proxy will add this for you.

EXAMPLE:

http://www.opensecrets.org/api/?method=getLegislators&output=json becomes /opensecrets/?method=getLegislators&output=json

Sunlight Foundation API

The Sunlight Foundation API is accessed via GET requests to one of the following routes:

/sunlight_congress/ for the Congress API

/sunlight_states/ for the States API

/sunlight_finance/ for the Realtime Finance API

New York Times API

The New York Times API can be found at /nyt_api/.

Use the proxy like this: /nyt_api/[[member]]/votes.json