Introduction to mnis

mnis is an R package to pull data from the UK parliament through the Members’ Name Information Service API. It emphasises simplicity and ease of use, so that users unfamiliar with APIs can easily retrieve large volumes of high quality data.

All functions return data in JSON format, which is parsed to a list or data frame, depending on the data that is returned.

There is also the mnis_base function that allows for increased flexibility in all API requests.

Installing mnis

From CRAN

install.packages(“mnis”)

From GitHub (Development Version)

install.packages(“devtools”) devtools::install_github(“EvanOdell/mnis”)

Load mnis

library(mnis)

Using mnis

mnis_Base function

The mnis_Base() function accepts requests to the mnis API. The full list of request options is available on the mnis website: http://data.parliament.uk/membersdataplatform/memberquery.aspx

Reference Functions

A series of functions to return reference data. This data is useful for providing parameters for other function calls. These functions do not accept any arguments.

ref_address_types()

ref_answering_bodies()

ref_areas()

ref_area_types()

ref_biography_categories()

ref_cabinets()

ref_committees()

ref_committee_types()

ref_constituencies()

ref_constituency_areas()

ref_constituency_types()

ref_countries()

ref_departments()

ref_disqualification_types()

ref_elections()

ref_election_types()

ref_end_reasons()

ref_experience_types()

ref_government_post_departments()

ref_government_posts()

ref_government_ranks()

ref_honourary_prefixes()

ref_honour_lists()

ref_honours()

ref_interest_categories()

ref_lords_membership_types()

ref_lords_ranks()

ref_opposition_post_departments()

ref_opposition_posts()

ref_opposition_ranks()

ref_other_parliaments()

ref_parliamentary_posts()

ref_parliamentary_ranks()

ref_parliament_types()

ref_parties()

ref_party_sub_types()

ref_photo_outputs()

ref_statuses()

ref_titles()

library(mnis)
x <- ref_titles()
x

#   Title_Id         Name
#1        22        Canon
#2         1         Dame
#4         3          Hon
#3         2           Dr
#6         5         Lord
#5         4         Lady
#7         6       Lt Col
#8        21       Lt Gen
#9         7         Miss
#10        8           Mr
#11        9          Mrs
#12       10           Ms
#13       11         Prof
#14       19    Professor
#15       12          Rev
#16       13       Rev Dr
#17       18         Revd
#18       20      Revd Dr
#20       15          Sir
#19       14     Reverend
#21       16      The Rev
#22       17 The Reverend

Additional Information Functions

mnis_additional()

mnis_addresses()

mnis_basic_details()

mnis_biography_entries()

mnis_committees()

mnis_constituencies()

mnis_elections_contested

mnis_experiences()

mnis_government_posts()

mnis_honours()

mnis_house_memberships()

mnis_interests()

mnis_known_as()

mnis_maiden_speeches()

mnis_opposition_posts()

mnis_other_parliaments()

mnis_parliamentary_posts()

mnis_parties()

mnis_preferred_names()

mnis_staff()

mnis_statuses()

mnis_extra()

The mnis_extra() function acts as a wrapper to the additional information functions. By default it calls all functions, which is equivalent to mnis_FullBiog().

Fixed Scope Functions

There are seven fixed scope functions that return ready-made datasets. They are:

mnis_party_state()

mnis_constituency_results()

mnis_department()

mnis_general_election_results()

mnis_lords_type()

mnis_member_date()