A friendly civic engagement tool that notifies users about their favorite bills. BILLinois allows users to search bills by name or by topic, view additional information about each bill including a summary of the bill, a tracker of its status, and its sponsors, and login to add bills of interest and sign up for notifications about those bills of interest. The live site is now available at billinois.unnamed.computer or billinoisapp.com.
BILLinois's initial focus is on the Illinois General Assembly, but a long-term goal of the project is to expand either to additional states or to additional levels of government. The website is also set up to include legislation from the Indiana General Assembly, and bills for either state can be searched for using the "Select a state" dropdown. However, the primary focus of the tool at this point remains on the Illinois General Assembly.
On the initial landing page, users can either search for a bill by name or topic, or select the "Menu" dropdown to log in to their account or create an account. For further personalization of the search process, users can also select a state to filter results to (currently Illinois or Indiana), or can select one of a pre-defined list of topics included as buttons below the search bar, which will conduct a search for bills relevant to that topic.
On the search results page, all bills meeting the search criteria are displayed with information including their bill number, bill title, latest status, and relevant topics. Users can also add a bill to their favorites from this page if they are logged in. The same search bar as on the landing page is available at the top of this page and of all pages in the tool.
On the page for each bill, more detailed information is displayed including a summary of the bill's contents, a tracker of each major action that has occurred for the bill, and a list of the bill's sponsors. Users can also add a bill to their favorites from this page if they are logged in.
Once logged in, users can also access a profile page where they will see their profile information and a list of their favorited bills. On this page, users can also edit their personal information, change whether they are receiving notifications about their favorited bills, and access the pages for any of their favorited bills directly.
This project uses uv to manage dependencies.
View documentation for this repository.
- Install uv
- Run
uv syncto sync your local.venvwith the requirements inpyprojects.toml - Run
uv tool install ruffto install the Ruff linter - Run
uv add --dev pytestto get setup with testing (this is a development package not included in the requirements) - Before pushing commits, run
ruff formatandruff checkto ensure you don't get shamed by Ruff 6. Currently GitHub Actions will automatically run this step for you, pending advice from James
After cloning the repository:
git switch frontendorgit switch backendto make a feature branch from one of these branchesgit switchto your feature branch
- If using command line, run
git pullandgit merge PARENT_BRANCH. For example, if your feature branch is branched fromfrontend, rungit merge frontend. This will pull all the most recent changes fromfrontendto your sub-branch.
data: contains data files used in projectapps/core: contains models and views for handling and displaying billsapps/accounts: contains models and views for user accountsdocs: contains architecture diagrams and summariestemplates: contains HTML templates for websitestatic: contains css and js files for websiteconfig: configuration fiestests: contains all tests related to the project
This project was created by University of Chicago MSCAPP students as a class project for Software Engineering for Civic Tech, taught by Professor James Turk.
Development Team
-
Livia Mucciolo
-
Echo Nattinger
-
Joaquin Pinto
-
Caitlin Pratt
-
David Steffen
-
Suchi Tailor
-
Karen Yi