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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

filibustr (development version)

filibustr 0.5.0 (2025-10-26)

CRAN release: 2025-10-26

Breaking changes

  • Updated the LES dataset in get_les() to include data from the 118th Congress (#30).
    • Deprecated the get_les(les_2) argument. It is no longer applicable to the new format of the LES dataset, which includes both versions of LES in the same dataset. This argument will be removed in a future release.
  • In the get_voteview_*() functions, downloading online data from multiple Congresses now uses {purrr} and {mirai} for parallelism, not {furrr} and {future} (#34, #42).
    • Data will be downloaded in parallel only if the {mirai} and {carrier} packages are installed.
    • To speed up data reading by using parallel downloads, use mirai::daemons():
## install {mirai} and {carrier} to enable parallel downloads
# install.packages("mirai")
# install.packages("carrier")

## detect the number of cores available on your machine
parallel::detectCores()

## launch multiple processes
# launch a specific number of processes
mirai::daemons(4)
# launch a process on all available cores (leaving one free)
mirai::daemons(parallel::detectCores() - 1)

## download Voteview data for multiple congresses
# Goal: with N processes, this can be up to
# N times faster than sequential downloads
get_voteview_rollcall_votes(congress = 95:118)
get_voteview_members(congress = 95:118)

## Good practice: close the connections when you're done using them
mirai::daemons(0)

See vignette("parallel-downloads", package = "filibustr") for more on downloading data in parallel.

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • In get_les(), preserve column labels from the source .dta file. Inspired by @shannonpileggi; sample code from @lefkiospaikousis (#35).
  • In get_les() and get_hvw_data(), preserve the st_name column for non-voting members of the House (i.e., members from D.C. and U.S. territories) (#32).
  • get_les() and get_hvw_data() see minor optimizations/speed improvements in their internal data cleaning processes.
  • Updated data source publication dates.
  • New dependency: {labelled}.
  • New suggested packages: {carrier}, {knitr}, {mirai}, {quarto}.
  • Removed dependencies: {furrr}, {future}.

filibustr 0.4.1 (2025-08-19)

CRAN release: 2025-08-19

  • Ensure web resources are online when running examples in function documentation (#36).
  • New suggested packages: {curl}.

filibustr 0.4.0 (2025-05-11)

CRAN release: 2025-05-11

New features

  • In the get_voteview_*() functions, download data in parallel (using {furrr}) when downloading online data for multiple Congresses (#19, #21).
  • Improved website appearance (#26).
  • Organized the function reference on the website (#27).

Minor improvements and bug fixes

filibustr 0.3.0 (2025-03-30)

CRAN release: 2025-03-31

Breaking changes

  • MAJOR CHANGE: Redesigned the interface for reading from local files. Now, to read from a local file, specify the file path using local_path (#17).
    • A given function call will now read data from either online or a local file, not try both. There is no longer an “online fallback” if a local file is not found.
    • Filtering local files: when working with local files, you can download one big file, and filter that file to smaller datasets as needed - no need to make multiple slow downloads!
    • The supported file types for local reading are: .csv, .dta, .tab, .tsv

Here is some example usage of the local_path argument, including the ability to filter local files:

## download large dataset
all_members <- get_voteview_members()
nrow(all_members)                       # 51036
levels(all_members$chamber)             # "President" "House"     "Senate"
range(all_members$congress)             # 1 119 (or the `current_congress()`)

## save to local file
tmp_csv <- tempfile(fileext = ".csv")
readr::write_csv(all_members, tmp_csv)

## read data from local file - much faster than downloading from online!
local_members <- get_voteview_members(local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(local_members)                     # 51036

## read smaller datasets from the local file
senators <- get_voteview_members(chamber = "sen", local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(senators)                          # 10125
levels(senators$chamber)                # "President" "Senate"

congresses_100_to_110 <- get_voteview_members(congress = 100:110, 
                                              local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(congresses_100_to_110)             # 6008
range(congresses_100_to_110$congress)   # 100 110

house_117 <- get_voteview_members(chamber = "hr", congress = 117,
                                  local_path = tmp_csv)
nrow(house_117)                         # 457
levels(house_117$chamber)               # "President" "House"
range(house_117$congress)               # 117 117
  • In the Voteview functions, an invalid congress now produces an error, instead of silently returning data for all Congresses.
  • In get_les(), returned data frames now use more specific column types, such as integer for count data and logical for binary data (#10).
    • NOTE: state abbreviations (columns state, st_name) and LES scores relative to expectation (columns expectation, expectation1, expectation2) are now factor variables.
  • get_voteview_members(): fix factor levels in the state_abbrev column.
  • In get_les(), 0- or 1-character strings for bioname are converted to NA.

New features

  • {filibustr} now has a documentation website! You can visit it at https://feinleib.github.io/filibustr/ (#18).
  • New get_voteview_cast_codes() provides the cast codes used in Voteview’s member votes data (#13).
  • New read_html_table() for reading HTML tables from online. It’s a nice shortcut for a common {rvest} workflow that otherwise takes 3 functions. read_html_table() was previously an internal function, but it’s useful enough that I think it should be exported, even if it’s not a core functionality of {filibustr} (#20).

Minor improvements and bug fixes

  • Improved error messages with cli::cli_abort() (#9).
  • When reading data from online, now retry up to 3 times in case of HTTP errors.
  • Fixes to online tests for CRAN.
  • Removed dependencies: {crul}, {R.utils}, {tidyselect}.
  • New dependencies: {cli}, {tools}.

filibustr 0.2.1 (2024-05-02)

CRAN release: 2024-05-02

Bug fixes

  • Handle HTTP errors when using online connections (#12).

filibustr 0.2.0 (2024-03-01)

CRAN release: 2024-03-01

Breaking changes

  • get_lhy_data() has been renamed to get_hvw_data().
  • In get_voteview_*(), chamber and congress now come before local and local_dir. This matches the argument order in get_hvw_data() (#3).

New features

  • New function get_les() retrieves Legislative Effectiveness Scores data from the Center for Effective Lawmaking (#5).

filibustr 0.1.1 (2024-02-13)

CRAN release: 2024-02-13

  • Fixes for CRAN.

filibustr 0.1.0 (2024-02-01)

  • Initial CRAN submission.