These projects are built on top of the legistar api.
example of the data you can get from the api
build and run the web site locally
The shape of the legistar api is such that real-time search is impractical.
The stuff we are interested in (what items were talked about in a particular meeting, how people voted, etc)
is not queryable from the api.
That information is all behind event or matter ids.
So to achieve search it is necessary to pull all data from legistar first, and store it ourselves.
I am currently using sqlite. It is I think good enough for this purpose.
Fetching the data and storing it is the easy part. Search is still undecided.
I had a very basic search functionality working earlier.
But it has significant limitations.
Would be great to find some kind of library or out-of-the-box solution.
fetched city meeting data from legistar and sore in a searchable db.
The main script is legisearch
It requires python3.8 or greater to run.
legisearch reset -n NAMESPACE will create a new db with empty tables, wiping any preexisting data for that namespace.
legisearch fetch -n NAMESPACE will pull events from legistar and store in a sqlite db.
legisearch search -n NAMESPACE STRING will search all previously fetched events for STRING.
Generates ical feeds from legistar meeting body info. There is a flask app in development. But the code works as a library. There is a functional project using the code here
Known namespaces in Santa Clara County:
| namespace | city |
|---|---|
| mountainview | Mountain View, CA |
| sunnyvaleca | Sunnyvale, CA |
| santaclara | Santa Clara, CA |
| sanjose | San Jose, CA |
| bart | BART |
Many more exist, check the subdomain crawler results to see if your local legislative body is in.