Missing URLs for some Committee Hearings

[nickom]

While adding some upcoming committee hearings to my calendar, I noticed a couple were missing URL information, despite finding URLs on their committee pages.

For example, here's the URL of this hearing:
http://www.aging.senate.gov/hearings/aging-in-comfort-assessing-the-special-needs-of-americas-holocaust-survivors

The app shows:

Another example is this hearing:
http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=32caee8082f9297f0e7df6280b1c1535

The app shows:

[dcloud]

The Congress API parses this information from an XML feed which does not always contain the URL, apparently. I don't know if there is another authoritative source for all hearings in the Senate (or both chambers for that matter) that we could switch to now. If not we'd probably have to write and maintain scrapers for each committee website to get better coverage of this information. Thoughts, @konklone?

[konklone]

The Senate feed has never provided URLs for individual hearings (and in the docs we preface the url field with "House only"). Only the House provides these hearing URLs.

You could link to the HTML version of the Senate committee hearings feed, that's what I do in Scout.

I do plan to drastically ramp up our committee information this year, but the richest gains are going to come from the House, which made a Committee Portal. Senate gains would still require individual scrapers (which would then all probably break whenever the majority in the chamber changes hands -- which is a real possibility for 2015).

[dcloud]

Thanks for the update. I think since the Senate's hearings HTML page simply provides links to committee websites, perhaps we do the same? Too bad there is not an analog to the House Committee Portal.

[konklone]

We're not currently including a committee.url field in hearing responses, but I added it in propublica/sunlight-congress@6ff6c20 and it should appear soon.

[dcloud]

See also: #319

[jcarbaugh]

After rereading this thread, I'm deciding that if a hearing doesn't have a unique URL, we don't link to anything. Linking to the Senate committee hearings feed provides no extra information about the hearing.

I propose changing the calendar nav bar button to an activity button and including Add to Calendar and Visit Site (or something more eloquent) in there. How's that sound to ya, @nickom and @dcloud?

[dcloud]

👍 to activity button with things!

[nickom]

That seems like an extra step, why not just add a link to the hearing inside the often-sparsely populated hearing page (assuming we have a link and obviously if not we show nothing). I'm pro activity button if there is more stuff we expect to add there, but personally I wouldn't think to click activity when I'm just looking for a URL.

[dcloud]

I think @jcarbaugh offered this since it is both something Apple encourages and we could easily add more stuff there. Basically the activity icon is supposed to indicate a number of things that can be done with information in an app (share, copy, print, add to calendar, etc.). I don't think it is well utilized in many third-party apps like Facebook and Twitter, but I think it works nicely in NY Times or Photos or Safari apps.

It could also exist as both a button on the page and an item in the activity sheet. Don't know how people feel about that.

[jcarbaugh]

I think you're going to see more apps adopting this strategy once iOS 8 comes out. Apple is pushing for these type of actions to go into the activities area since "Open in..."-style things can go there now. Here's a quick sampling of apps I use that put "Open in Safari" or similar options in the activities menu (not always using the system provided menu).

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/908tbylkfvqp8fg/AACUHXYJJccyYEcMmcnNjccha

[nickom]

Thanks for explaining, I had no idea Apple is pushing folks to put URL links into activity.

[jcarbaugh]

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say they are saying to put ALL URL links in there, but in this case I think that's best practice. I see this link as an "Open in...", to view the same resource in the browser instead of the app. URLs like a legislator's web site are different because they represent an entirely different resource than our profile screens and would make more sense on the screen itself. Sound right, @dcloud?

[dcloud]

That does sound right, @jcarbaugh