Project Donkey Audit

A personal project to practice the handling of APIs. Use the publically available UK parliament API to return data regarding specific MPs through a static web page.

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Inspiration

• Led by Donkeys are a fantastic organisation that deserve far more attention and influence than they receive. I passionately believe in greater transparency and accountability for elected officals and Governments. I feel that the imagined product would not be out of place as part of a similar instituition's website.
• Similar sites/services exist, such as TheyWorkForYou and the UK Parliament site "Find Your MP" service, but they are difficult to use, could present the data more palatably (in my opinion) and are not well known.
• I would like to produce a very simple website which displays multiple items from the UK Parliament Member API for a specified MP.
• This information would be presented clearly with a short section available on how to critically appraise the information.

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Outline

• Return information on MPs based on a search.

• Present the returned information clearly, with an about page that will assist the user with how to interpret the information and clearly state the owner/developer of this site along with their intention.

• Simple Aesthetic = Newspaper.

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/Placeholder - site displayed on multiple devices/

You can view the deployed website here.

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UX

Newspaper

Users Stories

• As a new user of this website, I want to be able to quickly and simply access an MPs most relevant records.
• As a new user of this website, I want data to presented in a clear, unbiased and digestible fashion.
• As a new user of this website, I want a guide to provide conext to the information I'm being presented.
• As a new user of this website, I want it to be clear who made this, and why they made it.

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Scope

Features

• Search parliament records by MP name (this can be handled with the API search query parameter to return an id for a specific MP)

Future Features

• Postcode search returning MP for that postcode (this may require several additional steps to convert postcode to constituencyId, constituencyId to mpId)
• ONS data for constituency postcodes is available as a .csv file from the ONS website.

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Structure (TBC)

• Header

  • Newspaper livery positioned left, About-page link on the right
  • Appears on every page

• Home Page

  • Search form with submit button
  • Updates page to display retrieved interesting MP data
  • 'Search Again' button to reset page to initial state.

• About

  • Explains displayed data and how to interpret it
  • Call to action to participate in government by writing to your MP/Voting
  • Clear statement of transparency on my behalf

• Footer

  • Appears on every page with required attributions and any/all social media links

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Wireframes

Home Page

Results

About

Mobile View - Home Page

Mobile View - Results

Mobile View - About

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Surface

Design

• Newspaper Aesthetic
  • Simple greyscale/black and white/off-white colour palette

Chosen Colour Palette

• Used #FFF and #000 for black and white

Fonts

• Imported Fraunces font (Google Fonts)

Media

• Used a paper-effect background image

Newspaper Livery

• A parody Newspaper livery was created by me using Canva.com

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Technologies Used

Languages

• HTML5
• CSS3
• JavaScript

Frameworks, Libraries & Programs Used

• Google Fonts - provided the Fraunces font for the site.

• Font Awesome - was used for the site icons.

• Bootstrap - was used to assist styling.

• Github - was used to store the project code.

• Balsamiq - was used to create site wireframes.

• UK Parliament member API - provided all information, licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.

Deployment

GitHub Pages

1. GitHub Pages was used to deploy the site.
2. The site was deployed early for the purposes of testing.
3. The latest deployed version can be seen here

Credits

Content

• Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0. Provided through the UK Parliament Members API and presented unmodified, as it is returned from Parliament records.
• The paper-texture background image is by bedneyimages on Freepik
• All code and supporting content was written by ProfYaffle88
• The format of this ReadMe.md was adapted from a docoument by Iris Smok
• Stack Overflow provided several solutions to multiple issues including alignment, positioning, and responsiveness. Stack Overflow

Media

• Newspaper livery element was created using Canva
• MP portraits are provided through the UK Parliament Members API under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to Code Institute, w3 Schools, Stack Overflow, ChatGPT, the team at UK Parliament that provide the powerful API totally free, and above all the holy trinity of tutors; Iris, Martin and Kevin.