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I have contacted data.gov numerous times about a project I am developing for a client. I have only received back one vague email requesting more information, but no reply since. Basically I need to interact with one of government sites that I can not find api for. Currently I have to copy the output data into a excel file for each city the project end user would request.

As you can imagine that's massive. Is there a way to send the inputted request to the government site get the returned data and pass it along to my other api then output the results to the end user? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew - OpenGeoCode
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Trainingday
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    if you know how to program, then you can automate anything in the browser (even forms). see, for example, https://pypi.python.org/pypi/mechanize/ – philshem Dec 10 '14 at 20:00
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    You mentioned that you are doing this for a specific government agency. Could I ask what agency you are looking at? – Kotebiya Dec 10 '14 at 21:05
  • Thanks philshem for link. I am a newbie. @kotebiya va website – Trainingday Dec 10 '14 at 21:41
  • @Kotebiya - not sure what data you are looking for. If you mean the VA website, they have datasets and API: http://www.va.gov/data/ – Andrew - OpenGeoCode Dec 11 '14 at 00:42
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    @Trainingday - like Andrew & philshem have mentioned, it would really help us help you if you tell us what data you're looking for. You'll likely need to scrape it. Check out ScraperWiki.com for a web IDE to build your scraping code with! – Mark Silverberg Dec 11 '14 at 04:50
  • @Kotebiya I need data from va and hud website like this site has: fhamap.,com they mention a master list and I have searched everywhere on data.gov for list. – Trainingday Dec 13 '14 at 14:03
  • @Andrew-OpenGeoCode I need data from va and hud website like this site has: fhamap.,com they mention a master list and I have searched everywhere on data.gov for list. – Trainingday Dec 13 '14 at 14:03
  • @Skram I need data from va and hud website like this site has: fhamap.,com they mention a master list and I have searched everywhere on data.gov for list. – Trainingday Dec 13 '14 at 14:03

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Trainingday,

I believe the master list tht fhamap.com refers to of all HUD owned, managed or approved properties is derived from their dataset of physical inspections of those properties. This and related datasets can be found here:

http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/pis.html

I've used these datasets myself. I also have a version of these datasets converted to CSV format using our linked data vocabulary.

http://www.opengeocode.org/cude1.2/HUD/PHA/index.php

It was as clear what you were looking for as a 'master list' from the VA. But the VA website has an open data portal and API. You can download a complete (national) list of VA hospitals and homeless services for Vets.

http://www.va.gov/data/

Andrew - OpenGeoCode
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  • thanks a million! I think they may be what I need. For the va site I need the same data approved condos/puds. The site is vip.vba.va.gov – Trainingday Dec 13 '14 at 16:32
  • @Trainingday - All I can find is the interactive form on the VA website. I checked data.gov and could not find any VA related dataset on approved condos. – Andrew - OpenGeoCode Dec 13 '14 at 16:48