Dan Roberts

1. It would require a different API that tracks federal legislation, but it would certainly be possible albeit a big project.
2. You can change the CSS files in ./public/ but there is not currently an easy way to edit the page. That is part of the improvement plan, but I’ll be honest. I haven’t had a lot of time to work on Legisearch for the last couple years.

Sorry for the delay. My email client must’ve caught this up in spam. The plugin only pulls votes.

It is also not designed to track bills as much as track legislators. So [legisearch_addresslookup] is really the main shortcode. That allows the user to enter their address and get the incumbent state legislators.

There is also [legisearch_chamberlink state=”{state}” chamber=”{upper|lower}”] to show all legislators.

There are a lot of cool ways to expand the plugin. If I ever get a break in my day job I may be able to do more than maintenance.

You need to add the bills and votes “manually” by looking them up in Admin and adding them as being “tracked” (Legisearch -> Add Bills). As long as you input the state, session, and bill number, it will pull the bill. Once the bill is being trakced, you can select it from the list (Legisearch -> All Bills) and select which votes to Show when people look up the bill. This plugin was designed for a very specific use-case.

For the geo-lookup, my test site is working. Can you tell me which state you are having trouble with? Often, problems are due to the Open States servers having issues with a particular state.

Thanks for letting me know! This is why I should always have a formal test plan to verify a “fix” didn’t break some other part of the code.

I just pushed 1.3.3 to correct this issue. I still don’t have a formal test plan, but I did a little more thorough testing this morning and everything looks like it works. Please let me know if you find any other problems. Thanks again!

The only problem I had on my test machine is that I needed to register a new API key with Open States at their new API Registration page (https://openstates.org/api/register/). The plugin will no longer work without a valid API key.

I pushed an update (1.3.2) to change some of the links and text to refer to the Open States API key (instead of the Sunlight Foundation). Please let me know if it still does not work for you.

The only problem I had on my test machine is that I needed to register a new API key with Open States at their new API Registration page (https://openstates.org/api/register/). The plugin will no longer work without a valid API key.

I pushed an update (1.3.2) to change some of the links and text to refer to the Open States API key (instead of the Sunlight Foundation). Please let me know if it still does not work for you.

I appreciate the feedback. It’s been a busy few months, but updating this plugin is on my agenda for this week.

Open States does not maintain this plugin. I have been working on a lot of other projects over the last couple months for clients. My current plan is to be able to work on this in November. If I find some free time before then I might start to take a look at it. It will probably take a few hours just to debug it to figure out what the problem is. Hopefully it’s something trivial.

It does look like some things aren’t working. This is purely a labor of love, so I haven’t had much time to maintain it lately. But now that the Open States API is more stable after their move, I will try to figure out what’s going on later this week. Thanks.

Marking as resolved as the this happened from a temporary data problem.

So that is not currently supported, but it would be a good future enhancement.

This was originally developed for a very specific use case that did not include a list of “tracked” bills for public view. I think this would be a great addition, however. I’ll put it on the list for the next update.

Yes. I am holding back a little on making updates until the transition gets a little more final. However, according to the developers the API is accepting anything as an API key (or nothing). So for the plugin to work, I would suggest just using any nonsense that fits the rule of 32 hexadecimal characters. For example, 32 0’s:

00000000000000000000000000000000

Once they get the key issue fixed, you may need to go in with a real API key.

According to a Sunlight Labs Tweet:

Location-based searches on @OpenStates are currently down, and we’re working on a fix now. Apologies for the inconvenience.

That’s really a question for Sunlight Foundation. All Legisearch does do is consume their data.

Sorry for the delay. The Open States API is in transition as its owner, The Sunlight Foundation, is closing down. The error you are experiencing is due to a failure from the Open States API. I am unsure if they will be willing to fix it, but the issue has already been reported on the Google Group for the project.

The only two workarounds I can think of right now are: (1) Remove the address lookup. The error is specific to the geo-lookup part of their API. You can still lookup legislators by their state and chamber. (2) Modify the plugin to do your own geolookup to match a latitude and longitude to a legislative district. This is obviously more technical.

My plan with this plugin is to wait to see where the Open States API moves to and re-write the plugin to use the new API location.