Adding history.active_at and history.active flags about congress HOT 5 CLOSED

+1

from congress.

Done. From the comments above the new activation_from method:

find the first action beyond the standard actions every bill gets.
- if the bill's first action is "referral", then the first non-referral action
    most common
    e.g. hr3590-111 (active), s1-113 (inactive)
- if the bill's first action is "action", then the next action, if one is present
    resolutions
    e.g. sres5-113 (active), sres4-113 (inactive)
- if the bill's first action is anything else (e.g. "vote"), then that first action
    bills that skip committee
    e.g. s227-113 (active)

This catches normal bills, House and Senate resolutions that I've found, and cases where leadership introduces a bill and skips committee (in the Senate anyway).

from congress.

Also, there are extensive tests now in test/test_bill_history.py. If you make any changes or additions to how the history flags work, please do add tests to that file, following the examples of other tests there.

Same for test/test_bill_actions.py - if you affect how actions get semantically parsed, do add/update the tests in that file.

from congress.

It's not good enough yet. :(

from congress.

OK, it is now. I caught a bug in marking some actions as referrals, and made it so it specifically ignored sponsors' introductory remarks. Now, in the 113th Congress, it marks only ~80 of the ~1600 bills/resolutions as "active", which feels right.

from congress.