wa-gov/candidate-surplus-funds-reports-9kcu-2bem
Icon for Socrata external plugin

Query the Data Delivery Network

Query the DDN

The easiest way to query any data on Splitgraph is via the "Data Delivery Network" (DDN). The DDN is a single endpoint that speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol. Any Splitgraph user can connect to it at data.splitgraph.com:5432 and query any version of over 40,000 datasets that are hosted or proxied by Splitgraph.

For example, you can query the candidate_surplus_funds_reports table in this repository, by referencing it like:

"wa-gov/candidate-surplus-funds-reports-9kcu-2bem:latest"."candidate_surplus_funds_reports"

or in a full query, like:

SELECT
    ":id", -- Socrata column ID
    "report_number", -- The unique number assigned to a report when it is filed. A 10 character number represents a paper filed report whose data was manually entered into the database. A 9 character number represents an electronically filed report.
    "person_id", -- The unique ID assigned to a public office holder or candidate. This id is consistent across years and, offices or candidacies and is the preferred id for identifying a natural person.
    "raised", -- This column is the cumulative total that has been transferred into the account from inception. 
    "version", -- The version of the report, representing the structure and elements of the submission. The version is necessary because the data structure is subject to change and improvement over time. Mostly relevant to data that is provided as JSON columns. Two reports records with different versions may not be interpreted in the same way due to changes in the organization of the data that may occur between versions. Any analysis should account for version changes.
    "filer_id", -- The unique id assigned to a candidate's surplus account. The filer id remains the same throughout years.
    "url", -- A link to a PDF version of the C4 summary report as it was filed with the PDC.
    "attachments", -- The report's attachment urls and all associated metadata in json format. Attachments may include original scanned reports (in the event of electronic filing exmeptions) or additional documentation supplied by the filer. Attachments may not be present on a given report.
    "committee_id", -- Committee ID
    "year", -- This column is provided to clarify in what year a report is filed. Since a surplus funds account can be active for multiple years, this column is created using the thru_date.
    "thru_date", -- A C4 report covers a specific period of time. This column is the end date of the report.
    "filer_name", -- The registered name of the surplus funds account.
    "origin", -- This column designates what type of report the data was retrieved from.
    "balance", -- This column shows the balance of surplus funds that a candidate reported on the last C4. This balance remains in the account until disposed of per RCW 42.17.
    "amended_by_report", -- This field only applies to records which have been superseded by an amendment. The value is the report number of the newer version of the report.
    "id", -- PDC internal identifier that corresponds to a candidate's surplus funds account. A candidate has only one surplus account which is valid until terminated. There is not an election year associated with a surplus funds account, money is transferred in and spent out of the account until closed.
    "metadata", -- At the point is submitted, the PDC automatically calculates totals and subtotals for certain information to make the report information easier to understand. This is primarily information that used to be captured on the forms, prior to electronic filing where the values can be calculated. None of the information in this field is supplied by the filer. The information is semi-structured JSON so that it is machine readable. The schema version of the information mirrors the schema version of the report_data column.
    "amends_report", -- This field only applies to records which amend a prior report. The value is the report number of the previous version of the report that is superseded by this record.
    "spent", -- This column is the cumulative total that has been spent out of the account from inception. 
    "from_date" -- A C4 report covers a specific period of time. This column is the start date of the report.
FROM
    "wa-gov/candidate-surplus-funds-reports-9kcu-2bem:latest"."candidate_surplus_funds_reports"
LIMIT 100;

Connecting to the DDN is easy. All you need is an existing SQL client that can connect to Postgres. As long as you have a SQL client ready, you'll be able to query wa-gov/candidate-surplus-funds-reports-9kcu-2bem with SQL in under 60 seconds.

This repository is an "external" repository. That means it's hosted elsewhere, in this case at data.wa.gov. When you querywa-gov/candidate-surplus-funds-reports-9kcu-2bem:latest on the DDN, we "mount" the repository using the socrata mount handler. The mount handler proxies your SQL query to the upstream data source, translating it from SQL to the relevant language (in this case SoQL).

We also cache query responses on the DDN, but we run the DDN on multiple nodes so a CACHE_HIT is only guaranteed for subsequent queries that land on the same node.

Query Your Local Engine

Install Splitgraph Locally
bash -c "$(curl -sL https://github.com/splitgraph/splitgraph/releases/latest/download/install.sh)"
 

Read the installation docs.

Splitgraph Cloud is built around Splitgraph Core (GitHub), which includes a local Splitgraph Engine packaged as a Docker image. Splitgraph Cloud is basically a scaled-up version of that local Engine. When you query the Data Delivery Network or the REST API, we mount the relevant datasets in an Engine on our servers and execute your query on it.

It's possible to run this engine locally. You'll need a Mac, Windows or Linux system to install sgr, and a Docker installation to run the engine. You don't need to know how to actually use Docker; sgrcan manage the image, container and volume for you.

There are a few ways to ingest data into the local engine.

For external repositories (like this repository), the Splitgraph Engine can "mount" upstream data sources by using sgr mount. This feature is built around Postgres Foreign Data Wrappers (FDW). You can write custom "mount handlers" for any upstream data source. For an example, we blogged about making a custom mount handler for HackerNews stories.

For hosted datasets, where the author has pushed Splitgraph Images to the repository, you can "clone" and/or "checkout" the data using sgr cloneand sgr checkout.

Mounting Data

This repository is an external repository. It's not hosted by Splitgraph. It is hosted by data.wa.gov, and Splitgraph indexes it. This means it is not an actual Splitgraph image, so you cannot use sgr clone to get the data. Instead, you can use the socrata adapter with the sgr mount command. Then, if you want, you can import the data and turn it into a Splitgraph image that others can clone.

First, install Splitgraph if you haven't already.

Mount the table with sgr mount

sgr mount socrata \
  "wa-gov/candidate-surplus-funds-reports-9kcu-2bem" \
  --handler-options '{
    "domain": "data.wa.gov",
    "tables": {
        "candidate_surplus_funds_reports": "9kcu-2bem"
    }
}'

That's it! Now you can query the data in the mounted table like any other Postgres table.

Query the data with your existing tools

Once you've loaded the data into your local Splitgraph engine, you can query it with any of your existing tools. As far as they're concerned, wa-gov/candidate-surplus-funds-reports-9kcu-2bem is just another Postgres schema.