DOJ_rest_api_ex.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Sat Feb 14 14:46:32 2015

@author: andrew

Data sources

code workshop 2

Script will:
write a script that will download the last 5 
DOJ press releases using their REST API

Print the title of each doc and save the json for each 
individual press release

www.justice.gov/developer/api-documentation/api_v1

IF YOU FINISH EARLY:
OpenCalais bit.ly/1vsO33f
Will do entity tagging via a rest API (NLP)
Need to sign up for a free account

Allen's answer bit.ly/1KVvH2a
"""

import requests
import json
import re 

#DOJ rest api
#url = "http://www.justice.gov/api/v1/press_releases.json"

def slugify(value):
    """
    Converts to ASCII. Converts spaces to hyphens. Removes characters that
    aren't alphanumerics, underscores, or hyphens. Converts to lowercase.
    Also strips leading and trailing whitespace.

    Note: This is not production code
    """
    value = value.encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode('ascii')
    value = re.sub('[^\w\s-]', '', value).strip().lower()
    return re.sub('[-\s]+', '-', value)

def get_releases(url):
    """
    gets the resources from the url and returns 
    results as json
    ="""
    #headers = {} <-- contains headers
    #can pass headers into requests.get(url, headers=headers
    response = requests.get(url)
    if response.ok:
        formatted = response.json()
        return formatted["results"]
    
def write_json_file(item):
    """
    Writes json object to json file
    """
    title = slugify(item["title"])
    with open("{0}.json".format(title), "w") as target:
        json.dump(item, target, indent=4, sort_keys=True)
        
def use_open_calais():
    #site url http://www.opencalais.com/documentation/calais-web-service-api/forming-api-calls
    #check your downloads folder for the python wrapper
    pass
        
def main():
    url = "http://www.justice.gov/api/v1/press_releases.json?pagesize=5"
    releases = get_releases(url)
    for release in releases:
        print release["title"]
        write_json_file(release)
        
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()