TL;DR
I created an R client to fetch data from the Federal Register, replacing an R package that had not been updated for years. It was my first foray into APIs.
Overview
The United States Federal Register is the clearing house for every revision to US administrative law, regulatory enforcement, and the more stupid forms of jockeying and horn-tooting by federal agencies. The website, charged with the supremely bureaucratic duty of pigeonholing and circumscribing every sort of change in the law, is quite beautiful. Its ease, features, and appearance bear the marks of something that is truly for the public.
To aid readers, [and the odd corporation trying to stay a step ahead of environmental regulations,] the Office of the Federal Register got a leg up from a developer who made an API client for R. Unfortunately,1 that client has been rendered useless by updates. In the name of openness digital and governmental, I set to work on a new API client that would:
- work
- teach me the fundamentals of APIs
- display some clever solutions
Footnotes
And quite ironically for an institution with steeped in such bureaucracy.↩︎