poplus-pci 0.1.12

Installation

poplus-pci is available as a module on PyPi, to install, simply run:

pip install poplus-pci

Alternatively, you can clone this repo and install as you see fit.

Quick start

First, let’s try read-only access to the legisladores-ar instance of Popit at mySociety, and get the paged list of political organizations in the argentinian parliament:

from pci import Popit

popit = Popit(
    instance='legisladores-ar',
    host='popit.mysociety.org',
)

instance

Name of the instance you want to point to. There can be more than one for one installation.

host

The hostname of the PopIt server.

Once an instancehas been created, it’s easy enough to access data, using a full object oriented interface:

os = popit.organizations.get()

# there are 65 organizations
print(os.total)


# but only 30 have been grabbed
print(o.page)
for i, o in enumerate(os.result, start=1):
    print("{0}: {1}".format(i, o.name))

# how to get next page?
print os.next_url

# get it
os = popit.organizations.get(params={'page': 2})

Write access (Popit)

Make sure you have all the information you need. Then get the object use the PopIt constructor.

from pci import Popit

popit = Popit(
    instance='openpolistest',
    host='popit.mysociety.org',
    api_key='-YOUR-API-KEY-',
)

api_key

This is the API key you can request by clicking ‘Get API key’ in the PopIt web interface for your instance, as described in the documentation.

Then the basic CRUD operations will be:

# create
einstein = popit.persons.post(data={
    'name': 'Albert Einstein',
    'links': [{
        'url': 'http://www.wikipedia.com/AlbertEinstein',
        'note': 'Wikipedia'
       }]
})

# read
popit.persons(einstein.result.id).get()

# update (note: is PUT, not PATCH)
popit.persons(einstein.result.id).put(data={"name": "Albert Einstein"})

# delete
popit.persons(einstein.result.id).delete()

If you’re still using an older PopIt instance and have not upgraded your account for the new, more secure authentication system, instead of api_key you can supply user and password:

popit = Popit(
    instance='openpolistest',
    host='popit.mysociety.org',
    user='-USERNAME-',
    password='-PASSWORD-'
)

user

Your username, the email address that you created the instance with

password

The password you were emailed when creating the instance

Popit Search api

Almost all APIs can be wrapped around the pci component, easily.

Starting from a popit instance, queries through the search API can be done:

popit.search.organizations.get(params={'q': 'trabajo'})
popit.search.organizations.get(params={'q': 'trabajadores'})

Mapit access

Mapit has read-only access, and the API does not adhere to REST standards.

The default Mapit instance is MySociety’s Global Mapit: http://global.mapit.mysociety.org/.

The mapit API call /point/SRID/LON,LAT/[box], can be invoked directly, by tortilla wrapping utilities, or by using Mapit helpers.

mapit = Mapit()
self.m.point.get('4326/12.5042,41.8981')
self.m.areas_overpoint(lat='41.8981', lon='12.5042', srid='4326', box=True)

Other helpers are available, and will be implemented as needed in the futures. You can find them in the pci/__init__.py file.

Caching

To limit the amount of requests to an API endpoint, a caching mechanism is available. You can activate this with the cache_lifetime parameter, when creating a pci instance:

mapit = Mapit(
    cache_lifetime=60,
)

Single requests, though, can be performed ignoring the cache alltogether:

mapit.point.get('4326/12.5042,41.8981', ignore_cache=True)

Requirements

If you don’t use pip to install the module, you’ll also need:

• tortilla (pip install tortilla)

How to run the tests

• Copy the file config_sample.py to config_test.py

• Change the entries in config_test.py to refer to your test servers

• Install oktest (pip install oktest)

• Make sure components instances are running, and you have access to them. You cannot test this wrapper without running instances.

• run python test.py to run all tests, python test_mapit.py, or python test_popit.py to run the specified component’s tests

Changelog

=== 0.1 (2015-02-20) ===
initial release

Credits

• tortilla

• popit-python

• slumber