Not nearly to the planned end point but I have corrected a file I generated with XQuery that provides the name-id numbers for members of the House and a link to their websites at house.gov.
It is a rough draft but you can find it at: http://www.durusau.net/publications/name-id-member-website-draft.html.
While I was casting about for the resources for this posting, I had the sinking feeling that I had wasted a lot of time and effort when I found: http://clerk.house.gov/xml/lists/MemberData.xml.
But, if you read that file carefully, what is the one thing it lacks?
A link to every members’s website at “….house.gov.”
Isn’t that interesting?
Of all the things to omit, why that one?
Especially since you can’t auto-generate the website names from the member names. What appear to be older names use just the last name of members. But, that strategy must have fallen pretty quickly when members with the same last names appeared.
The conflicting names and even some non-conflicting names follow a new naming protocol that appears to be firstname+lastname.house.gov.
That will work for a while until the next generation starts inheriting positions in the House.
Anyway, that is as far as I got today but at least it is a useful list for invoking the name-id of members of the House and obtaining their websites.
The next step will be hitting the websites to extract contact information.
Yes, I know that http://clerk.house.gov/xml/lists/MemberData.xml has the “official” contact information, along with their forms for email, etc.
If I wanted to throw my comment into a round file I could do that myself.
No, what I want to extract is their local office data so when they are “back home” meeting with constituents, the average voter has a better chance of being one of those constituents. Not just those who maxed out on campaign donations limits.