[Open-Legislation] API for storing / retrieving law parts

Thu Jan 9 23:29:45 UTC 2014

Ohai guys,

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:10:47AM +0100, stef wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 09, 2014 at 11:59:47PM +0100, Hanssens Bart wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > 
> > as a pet project, I'm trying to specify a REST(-ish) API for storing / retrieving (Belgian) laws, civil code etc
> > 
> > Rather than using git (or another versioning system), I'm inclined to "just" store text into a data store
> > (RDBMS, although maybe an XML store would be better)
> > 
> > Initial ideas and goals can be found at
> > -  http://relex-toolbox.googlecode.com/git/relex-api/Relex-API.pdf
> 
> my dear friend Bram has been working on something similar for belgian law i
> think. maybe there's room for reuse.

Indeed, I've created http://dierentheater.be/ (but sucks at
advertisement) and noselus.be is using it for written questions
http://www.noselus.be/

It's basically a lachambre.be to json converter. It's not finished yet
and the data online are a bit outdated (because they have changed
their website and that I'm playing with other things, but on request,
I'll refocus on it again sooner).

On the content of law published on lachambre.be, last time I've
checked the situation is really shitty because they are published very
hard to parse pdf files. Example: http://www.lachambre.be/FLWB/PDF/53/2183/53K2183001.pdf

But this is only for lachambre.be, more general law text can be found
on moniteur.be but I haven't investiguate it at all.

On a more positive note, Tim, added to the conversation, has made
belaws.be which is, up to my knowledge, the more advanced open source
projet related to the belgium law http://belaws.be/

I'll be at FOSDEM and I'm living in Brussels if you want to meet me. I
really love those issue but the Belgium context isn't crazy
motivating.

You should also contact more generally noselus.be (I think that I'm
part of it :p) since they are more or less working on similar issues.
The google group of the project is here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/noselus-be

Kind regards,

-- 

Laurent Peuch -- Bram