The slides from my presentation on the internal architecture and future plans for the New York State Senate's Open Legislation project @ Capitol Camp.

1. Open Legislation
“Browse, search and share
legislative Information from the
New York State Senate”

2. The Developers
Nathan Freitas
Jared Williams
Graylin Kim
#nyss_openlegislation @ freenode

3. Announcements
Opened our platform
– Eclipse J2EE, detailed setup instructions
– Moved to Github!
● http://github.com/nysenatecio/OpenLegislation
Went Mobile!
– On the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and iPad
Gathering outside interest

4. Summer 2010
Improving as a Platform

5. We'll look at then and now
to make clear our trajectory.
Then, end with an open discussion
on the destination of the platform.

6. The RESTful Interface

7. Then

8. API
Collection – /api/1.0/<format>/<otype>/<oid>
– /api/1.0/html/bill/S66026
– /api/1.0/html/calendar/cal-floor-00001-2009-2010
– /api/1.0/html/transcript/1401
Search – search/?term=<query>&format=<format>
– /search/?term=otype:action&pageIdx=5&pageSize=40
Shortcuts - /<shortcut>
– /actions
– /bills
– /votes

9. Now

10. API Rules
1. URL Layout Should be Consistent and Unified
– /2.0/<command>
2. Required Arguments Should be explicit
– /2.0/<command>/<the>/<required>.<format>
3. Arguments should be clear and understandable
– /2.0/bill/<bill_id>-<session year>.<format>
– /2.0/calendar/<type>-<MM-DD-YYYY>.<format>
– /2.0/transcript/<type>-<MM-DD-YYYY>.<format>
4. Provide as much information as possible

11. API
/2.0/command(/<required_arg>)*.<format>
Examples
– /2.0/search.html?term=oid:S66026 AND otype:bill
– /2.0/bill/S66026-2009.json
– /2.0/transcript/regular-06-22-2010.xml
– /2.0/calendar/tomorrow.html
Not backwards compatible!

12. Data
<response> {
<metadata> "metadata": {
<total>20</total> "total":20,
<status>SUCCESS</status> "status":"success"
</metadata> },
<results> "results": [
<result> {
<type>bill</type> "type":"bill",
<data> "data":{
<id>S60023</id> "id":"S60023",
<text> ..... </text> "text":"....",
... ...
</data> }
</result> },
.... ....
Reflection driven dumps of all (useful) available data!

13. The Response Speed

14. We don't have metrics
(we probably should)
Just trust us, it got faster
Lets look at how

15. 3 Stage Process
1. Populating MySQL
2. Populating Lucene
3. Serving the Data
– Routing the Requests
– Load the Data
– Render the Data

16. Then

20. Now

24. Looking to the Future

25. Some thoughts...
Complete decoupling of Data Models
Automation with Reflection/Annotation
Standards for Data Models
Client Libraries for more languages, platforms

26. Work is always ongoing
Suggestions, issues, and concerns are
ALWAYS welcome.