SunScrape

A python library that scrapes and parses campaign finance data from the Florida Secretary of State's website.

Installation

This package isn't on PyPI yet, so install from the repo:

pip install git+https://github.com/SunSentinel/SunScrape.git

Usage

SunScrape makes it possible to grab campaign finance data in bulk in a usable, machine-readable format.

This library provides a way to search Florida's campaign finance portal either by a particular entity or a specific filing type.

By entity

Results can be obtained for a particular candidate or committee.

Candidate

Results for a candidate.

Committee

Results of a particular committee registered in the state. A list of these committees can be found here: https://dos.elections.myflorida.com/committees/ComLkupByName.asp

By filing

You can also search through all contributions, expenses or fund transfers reported to the SOS's office. Additional search terms can also be passed to these object:

• candidate_first - Candidate first name
• candidate_last - Candidate last name
• from_date - Start date (MM/DD/YYYY)
• to_date - End date (MM/DD/YYYY)
• committee_name - Committee name, or partial name
• election_id - See Election IDs
• all_time - True or False, returns results for all years

Contributions

Expenses

Transfers

Example

>>> from sunscrape.contributions import ContributionScraper
>>> scraper = ContributionScraper(candidate_first='Ron', candidate_last='Desantis')
>>> scraper.results

[{'candidate': 'DeSantis, Ron', 'candidate_party': 'Republican', 'date': '2018-07-18', 'amount': '3000.00', 'type': 'CHE', 'contributor_name': '1188 PARTNERS, LLC', 'contributor_address': '2141 ALAQUA DRIVE', 'contributor_address2': 'LONGWOOD, FL 32779', 'contributor_occupation': 'INSURANCE', 'inkind_description': ''}...]

Known issues

Election IDs

The library allows finance records searches by election, but you need the election ID used by the Secretary of State. You can find these with the get_election_ids() method.

Searching by date

The SOS's expenditure and fund transfer search portals fail when specifying a date, so we excluded these options from the expenditures and transfers objects. Though it is still possible to use the arguments in contributions objects.

Development

Requirements

• Python 3
• Virtual environment

Steps

1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/SunSentinel/SunScrape.git
2. Change into project directory: cd SunScrape
3. Start up your virtual environment.
4. Install SunScrape from local source: pip install -e .
5. Install requirements: pip install -r requirements.txt or pipenv install for pipenv users.

Running tests

pytest

Contributing

Want to help out? Submit an issue or pull request.

License

MIT