ottawacitycouncilvotingrecords

Tools to automate the tracking of Ottawa City Councillor voting records.

Setup

1) Prerequisites

• Python 3.12+
• git

2) Clone the repository

git clone <repository-url>
cd ottawacitycouncilvotingrecords

3) Create and activate a virtual environment

python3.12 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

4) Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

5) Run the scraper

python -m ottawa_city_scraper.cli --start-date 2026-03-01 --end-date 2026-03-18

Optional arguments:

• --output-root: base directory for outputs (default: datasets)
• --meeting-name: only scrape meetings whose name exactly matches the provided value, case-insensitive
• --verify-cert: enforce TLS certificate verification (default currently disables cert validation for self-signed endpoints)

Run outputs are written under:

<output-root>/runs/<start>_to_<end>_<timestamp>/

CLI Usage

You can run the CLI either as a module or as a script:

python -m ottawa_city_scraper.cli --start-date 2026-02-25 --end-date 2026-02-26

python ottawa_city_scraper/cli.py --start-date 2026-02-25 --end-date 2026-02-26

Common examples:

python ottawa_city_scraper/cli.py --start-date 2026-02-25 --end-date 2026-02-26
python ottawa_city_scraper/cli.py --start-date 2026-02-25 --end-date 2026-02-26 --meeting-name "City Council"
python ottawa_city_scraper/cli.py --start-date 2026-02-25 --end-date 2026-02-26 --output-root datasets
python ottawa_city_scraper/cli.py --start-date 2026-02-25 --end-date 2026-02-26 --verify-cert

Arguments:

• --start-date: required date range start in YYYY-MM-DD format. Defaults to today.
• --end-date: required date range end in YYYY-MM-DD format. Defaults to tomorrow.
• --meeting-name: optional exact meeting-name filter, matched case-insensitively.
• --output-root: optional base directory for generated run folders. Defaults to datasets.
• --verify-cert: optional flag to enforce TLS certificate verification.

What the CLI does:

1. Fetches the Ottawa eScribe calendar meetings for the requested date range.
2. Filters to English PostMinutes HTML documents.
3. Optionally narrows the meetings to a single meeting name such as City Council.
4. Scrapes and parses each matching meeting minutes page into a meeting-specific JSON file.

Output files:

• calendar_meetings.json: raw calendar-meetings API response.
• One parsed meeting-minutes JSON file per matching meeting, named like:

2026-02-25_city_council_d81e8843-78b0-45b1-9ccd-fcc20e8b2526_postminutes.json

6) Run tests

pip install -r requirements.txt
pytest

7) Deactivate virtual environment

deactivate