Zelus is a part of the Sinar Project. Sinar Project is a collection of related open source projects which consists of open data providers as well as applications that make information accessible to Malaysian citizens.
Zelus is a re-write of the earlier Kratos project, in Sinatra. Zelus provides data on Members of Parliament (MP), ADUN and Council Members in Malaysia, including what they stand for, whay their policies are and how to contact them. The primary service that Zelus provides is a set of APIs that other projects and applications are able to extract information on. The target users of Zelus are software applications!
The primary API endpoint for Zelus is:
http://zelus.herokuapp.com
Zelus is a work in progress!
There are 2 types of requests to the Zelus APIs:
- HTTP GET - not authenticated, used to retrieve data only
- HTTP POST - authenticated by an API key, used to create or update records in Zelus
Generally to get data from Zelus, you will do something like the following:
GET /person/<uuid>
GET requests are not authenticated but you can optionally attach the API key in order to allow us to track usage by your application. A sample application is provided at https://github.com/Sinar/Zelus-Sample.
There are a number of entities within Zelus.
An account in Zelus. Each user account has an API key, which is essential to creating records in Zelus.
A human being. This is the base entity for a representative.
A Member of Parliament, ADUN or Council Member, generally anyone who is elected by and represents citizens. Representatives and People have the same attributes. A representative can be connected with one or more people, who might or might not be another representative. For example, this can show an MP and 2 of his business associates.
A political party
A coalition of political parties
A geographical region
A political constituency
A contested district
A UUID is a unique identifier, which is compatible with RFC4122. All entities in Zelus are uniquely identified by their UUID. To reference an entity within Zelus, you need to know its UUID.
Every POST request must be made with an API key. You can also attach a GET request with an API key although it is not necessary. Each request (GET or POST) is logged and you will be able to keep track on your own API calls (future feature).
POST /person?api_key=<api-key>
If you want to create records, please submit a request to create a user account in Zelus.
All records are in JSON only. The general syntax for the response is:
{
status: success || error,
payload: ...
}
The status can be either success or failure. The payload is usually another JSON object or a list of JSON objects.
GET /people
Show all people
GET /people/:page_size/:page
Get all people, with pagination. Parameters are:
- page_size - how many records to get in a single call
- page - the page number
You will get a list of people records and the current page number asked for. For example, if you request GET /people/10/1 you will get a list of the first 10 people records. If you request GET /people/10/2 you will get a list of the next 10 people records.
The response for this request is:
{
status: success || error,
page_size: <the size of the current page>
next_page: <the next page number>
previous_page: <the preious page number>
payload: ...
}
previous_page is the number of the prevous page, while next_page is the number of the next page.
GET /representatives
Show all people who are members of parliament
GET /person/:uuid
Show person by uuid. This includes the parties he/she has joined and/or is currently in. This also gives a list of people he/she is connected with.
GET /representative/:uuid
Show an MP by uuid
POST /person
Create a new person record. Parameters for creating a person are:
- name - full name
- email - primary email address
- facebook - Facebook profile link
- twitter - Twitter handle e.g. @user_name
- linkedin - Linkedin public profile link
- www - website
- phone - mobile phone number
- fax - fax number
- race - race e.g. Malay, Chinese, Indian etc
- sex - Male or Female
- birth_year - year of birth e.g. 1968
- education - a text field representing the highest education attained
- home_address - person's home address
- office_address - person's office address
- deceased_at - a date field representing the date of the person's death (if so)
- biography - a text field of information on the person
Note that you need to provide an API key along with every POST request.
POST /representative
Create a new MP record. Parameters are as with creating a person record above.
POST /person/:uuid
Update a person record, identified by its uuid. Parameters used are as with creating a person record as above. Note that you need to provide an API key along with every POST request.
POST /representative/:uuid
Update a person record, identified by its uuid. Parameters used are as with creating a person record as above. Note that you need to provide an API key along with every POST request.
GET /people/search/:query
Search for people by name or email
GET /people/party/:uuid
Show all people by party, given the party uuid
POST /person/party
Associate a person with a party. Parameters are:
- person_uuid
- party_uuid
Note that you need to provide an API key along with every POST request.
POST /person/connect
Connect a person with another person. Parameters are:
- uuid1 - uuid of the first person
- uuid2 - uuid of the second person
- relation - the relationship between the 2 people e.g. father-son, husband-wife, friend, business associate, brother-sister etc
Note that you need to provide an API key along with every POST request.
GET /regions
Show all regions
GET /coalitions
Show all coalitions
GET /parties
Show all parties
GET /constituencies
Show all constituencies
GET /districts
Show all districts