List current session bills

[kittarlin]

I think it would be neat if it autogenerated a list of all the bills and titles, probably on a separate page so it doesn’t get in the way of those who know what bill they are after. Maybe it’s as simple as linking to the legislature’s list? Or maybe it needs more work? But I can see value in having the list easily accessible so that one could then comment or just be informed.

[eldang]

👍

My original use case for this page is more like "People are talking about a bill by its number and I wish I knew what they were referring to", but what you suggest seems like a fairly simple way to make it more broadly useful.

[eldang]

Well, that's the simplest way of addressing this. The page it links to seems regular enough that it might be amenable to being machine parsed without going too far down fancy parser rabbit holes, in which case we might be able to do a few nicer things:

• Incorporating a prompt somewhere on the main page with hints like the range of valid bill numbers so far, the range of bills introduced in the past day/week, etc.
• Automagically figuring out if the user has entered a bill number that has a companion bill in the other chamber, and opening those links too as per Can we automatically connect House & Senate bills to each other? #15
• Warning people if they enter an invalid bill number, as part of Should give people feedback when the links don't work #13