Overview

The Congress Explorer is an open-source platform aimed at searching and exporting data about the Congress members.

The Congress Explorer leverages the Sunlight Labs API. It provides a rich user-interface to perform complex searches on legislators:

• by name
• by title (Senator, Representative,...)
• by political party
• by gender
• by location (state, district)
• by contacts (Twitter, Bioguide, ...)

Export

Search results can be exported in different formats:

• PDF documents
• Excel worksheets

Demo

A Flash Demo demonstrates most of the features of the Congress Explorer.

Technical Details

The Congress Explorer open-source platform is written in Java and built on-top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).

Part of the project consists of a Java Porting of the Sunlight Labs API.

Requirements

• Java 1.5 or higher
• Platforms:
• Windows
• Linux x86/GTK 2
• Any platform supported by Eclipse

Installation

For Windows:

• either download and execute the Setup EXE
• or download and extract the Installer ZIP

For Linux (x86/GTK 2):

• download and extract the Installer ZIP

Other Platforms:

• Import the Source Code into Eclipse 3.4.x or higher
• Open the file 'com.abso.sunlight.explorer.product' in the plug-in project 'com.abso.sunlight.explorer'
• Follow the 'Eclipse Export product wizard' instructions