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The Federal Election Commission (FEC) releases information to the public about money that’s raised and spent in federal elections — that’s elections for US president, Senate, and House of Representatives.

Are you interested in seeing how much money a candidate raised? Or spent? How much debt they took on? Who contributed to their campaign? The FEC is the authoritative source for that information.

betaFEC is a collaboration between 18F and the FEC. It aims to make campaign finance information more accessible (and understandable) to all users.

We welcome you to explore, make suggestions, and contribute to our code.

This repository, openFEC-web-app, houses the betaFEC web app for exploring campaign finance data.

• FEC: a general discussion forum. We compile feedback from betaFEC’s feedback widget here, and this is the best place to submit general feedback.
• openFEC: betaFEC’s API
• openFEC-web-app: the betaFEC web app for exploring campaign finance data
• fec-style: shared styles and user interface components
• fec-cms: the content management system (CMS) for betaFEC

We’re thrilled you want to get involved!

• Read our contributing guidelines. Then, file an issue or submit a pull request.
• Send us an email.
• If you’re a developer, follow the installation instructions in the README.md page of each repository to run the apps on your computer.
• Check out our StoriesonBoard FEC story map to get a sense of the user needs we'll be addressing in the future.

This application is in Flask. Client side features are managed using Browserify and npm.

It uses Python version 3.4. Its recommended that you create a virtualenv before installing Python dependencies.

Install Python dependencies:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Install client side dependencies:

$ npm install -g browserify
$ npm install

If you plan to do client side JS developent, you will want to install Watchify:

$ npm install -g watchify

The Flask app talks to an API for data. See openFEC.

The app has HTTP auth enabled. You will need to set environment variables with your desired username and password. Those vars are FEC_WEB_USERNAME and FEC_WEB_PASSWORD. There are other config environment variables that you can set, but that have defaults. You can see those in openfecwebapp/config.py.

To make the site fully functional, you will need to compile the client side JS and CSS:

$ npm run build

Then start the server:

$ python __init__.py

To run the server in debug mode set:

$ export FEC_WEB_DEBUG=true

To use styles served from a custom location (e.g., if developing against a local fec-style):

$ export FEC_WEB_STYLE_URL=http://localhost:8080/css/styles.css

To be able to have links between this app and a local installation of the cms:

$ export FEC_CMS_URL=http://localhost:8000

If you'd like the app to cache API requests it makes, use the --cached flag:

$ python __init__.py --cached

To compile client side JS once:

$ npm run build-js

Compile Sass once:

$ npm run build-sass

Compile JS as changes are made:

$ npm run watch-js

Compile Sass as changes are made:

$ npm run watch-sass

See directions in the 18F/openFEC repo.

To avoid repeated requests to the OpenFEC API, the webapp can store recent API responses in a small in-memory cache. The cache can be enabled by setting the FEC_WEB_CACHE environment variable; the size of the cache, in items, is controlled by the FEC_WEB_CACHE_SIZE environment variable. When the cache is enabled, views may be stale for up to the cache duration set by the API.

$ py.test

First, install PhantomJS.

Configure development environment:

$ unset FEC_WEB_API_KEY
$ export FEC_WEB_API_URL=http://fec-dev-api.18f.gov
$ export FEC_WEB_TEST=true

Run development app server:

$ python __init__.py

While app is running, run tests:

$ py.test --selenium

If the development API is down or for testing with feature branches of the API, a local API server can be used:

$ unset FEC_WEB_API_URL

This repo includes optional post-merge and post-checkout hooks to ensure that dependencies and compiled assets are up to date. If enabled, these hooks will update Python and Node dependencies, and rebuild compiled JS and CSS files, on checking out or merging changes to requirements.txt, package.json, or source JS or SCSS files. To enable the hooks, run

$ invoke add_hooks

To disable, run

$ invoke remove_hooks

This project is in the public domain within the United States, and we waive worldwide copyright and related rights through CC0 universal public domain dedication. Read more on our license page.

A few restrictions limit the way you can use FEC data. For example, you can’t use contributor lists for commercial purposes or to solicit donations. Learn more on FEC.gov.