Enable State-level Emails #903

wtcruft · 2023-01-18T16:43:10Z

This pull request adds functionality to enable users to email their state-level representatives. The overall design of the code is informed by the following constraint: the Google Civic API’s determination that we do not store the data we pull from their API. Therefore, there are minimal changes to the database.

Lib
Email addresses of state-level representatives are pulled from the aforementioned third-party API in a new library, civic_api.rb. Two methods are available here, one which pulls a single representative given a specific address and postal code (user-supplied), and the other which pulls all representatives in one legislative body (upper, lower, or a Governor) given only a state. This library gives us the flexibility to implement small changes in the future which will enable both state-wide email address look-ups as well as multiple-legislative body look-ups.

The first method, state_rep_search, is the current and primary use case. It looks up a single legislator, given a user-supplied address and an admin-supplied legislative level. Example usage:

CivicApi.state_rep_search(‘815 Eddy St San Francisco CA 94109’, ‘legislatorLowerBody’)

Database
Acceptable values for the 2nd parameter are ‘legislatorLowerBody’, ‘legislatorUpperBody’, and ‘headOfGovernment’. These are set by the admin user in the action creation panel, when they choose the legislative body for which users will look up the email address. The admin will also select from a dropdown list which state the action is intended for. This differentiates a “state” email campaign from a “custom” email campaign (the kind that already exist in the action center). These selections in the admin panel make changes in the database, inserting boolean values for state as well as for target_state_lower_chamber, target_state_upper_chamber and target_governor on the given EmailCampaign, if chosen.

Views
The templates for the email addresses have been split up so that the email address can be pulled from the API and displayed on the front-end. This way, the user can check who they will be emailing and then the email address will be injected into the template that is usually generated without having to go into our database, and without affecting the current custom email generation. In the same way as before these changes, only the “thank you for taking action” emails are sent from the back-end.

Tests
While there are new tests for the added functionality, it was also necessary to make additional testing changes. Several tests were failing both on the main branch and here. Rather than put those changes in a different pull request, which would block this work from passing tests until it was merged, I have changed some of the test configuration and a few existing tests in this branch so that the suite is more up to date.

…rom a template generated by email actions

wtcruft · 2023-01-18T16:44:05Z

app/controllers/admin/action_pages_controller.rb

@@ -194,14 +194,16 @@ def action_page_params
      petition_attributes: [:id, :title, :description, :goal, :enable_affiliations],
      affiliation_types_attributes: [:id, :name],
      tweet_attributes: [
-        :id, :target, :target_house, :target_senate, :message, :cta, :bioguide_id,
+        :id, :target, :target_house, :target_senate, :target_state_lower_chamber,
+        :target_state_upper_chamber, :message, :cta, :bioguide_id,


This change is no longer necessary, it was left over from an earlier iteration of the work. I will remove it along with the rest of the code review changes.

esoterik

This review is just from reading through the code; I'll do a bit of QA and review the tests more thoroughly on Monday.

Overall this is really great! I suggested some minor-to-medium-sized refactors in my comments. The biggest lift of these would be changing the leg_level method and associated database columns into an enum if we're not planning on allowing a single action to multiple levels.

I also sorta started one refactor into a service object pattern for the API calls in a comment because I thought it might be helpful / more clear. I'm also not sure how widely-known of a pattern this is, so if you haven't heard of it this blogpost does a great job of explaining it -- I use this kind of design a lot!

I also think that it would be nice to have this kind of action be its own kind of campaign rather than adding onto the already existing email campaign, but I understand why you implemented it this way -- really the whole action type / campaign system could use a good rethink + refactor in this app anyway. I'm fine with leaving state level actions as a part of email campaigns for now and opening an issue to separate the two action types in the future.

esoterik · 2023-01-28T00:34:39Z

app/models/email_campaign.rb

@@ -2,6 +2,9 @@ class EmailCampaign < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :topic_category
  has_one :action_page

+  # No DC
+  STATES = %w(AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY)


I think that we might have this info elsewhere in the app -- I'll check.

Also, we should add a .freeze to the end of this array for a small performance gain -- I'm pretty sure that this app is on a ruby version where that's necessary, but I might be wrong!

esoterik · 2023-01-28T00:36:06Z

README.md

@@ -31,6 +31,9 @@ Follow these instructions to run the Action Center using Docker (recommended). T
  * Allows users to submit e-messages to congress
 * [Call Congress](https://github.com/EFForg/call-congress) url and API key
  * Connects calls between citizens and their congress person using the Twilio API
+* [Google Civic Information API](https://developers.google.com/civic-information) url and API key
+  * Representative information powered by the Civic Information API
+  * We use this when we need to give a user the ability to find their representatives to complete a state-level email action


It'd be nice to add the API restrictions into the readme as well as the code comment you have in the CivicApi module

esoterik · 2023-01-28T00:47:52Z

app/controllers/tools_controller.rb

+      if params[:state_rep_email]
+        redirect_to @action_page.email_campaign.service_uri(params[:service], { email: params[:state_rep_email] })
+      else
+        redirect_to @action_page.email_campaign.service_uri(params[:service])


It'd be nice if we used strong parameters here to pass only one argument to #service_uri -- maybe something like

def email # beginning omitted redirect_to @action_page.email_campaign.service_uri(email_uri_params.to_h) end def email_uri_params params.permit(%i(service state_rep_email)) end

and then for the method

def service_uri(service:, state_rep_email: nil) # ... end

esoterik · 2023-01-28T00:56:56Z

app/views/admin/action_pages/_email_fields.html.erb

+    <% end %>
+
+    <div id="state-level-target-selection">
+      <p>For now, please choose only one.</p>


Is it possible that we'll want to be able to select more than one of these in the future? If not, this would be a great attribute set to use an enum for

Indeed! That is the future vision, to select more than one.

esoterik · 2023-01-28T01:04:18Z

app/views/action_page/_state_reps.html.erb

+        <%= "We could not find their email address." %>
+      <% end %>
+    </div>
+  <% end -%>


this can be simplified to

<% if sr["emails"].present? %> They can be reached at: <%= sr["emails"].join(", ") %> <% else %> We could not find their email address. <% end %>

esoterik · 2023-01-28T01:37:58Z

app/models/email_campaign.rb

+    role = "headOfGovernment" if self.target_governor
+
+    return role
+  end


It'd be nice to use guard clauses here + have an explicit default value:

def leg_level(email_campaign) return "headOfGovernment" if email_campaign.target_governor return "legislatorUpperBody" if email_campaign.target_state_upper_chamber return "legislatorLowerBody" if email_campaign.target_state_lower_chamber "" end

esoterik · 2023-01-28T01:51:34Z

lib/civic_api.rb

+    begin
+      error = JSON.parse(e.http_body)["error"]
+    rescue
+      raise


we should still raise an error here I think?

esoterik · 2023-01-28T01:59:31Z

lib/civic_api.rb

+    # need to append division information to API route
+    path_params = { ocdId: "ocd-division%2Fcountry%3Aus%2Fstate%3A#{state.downcase}" }
+    # `administrativeArea1` param restricts the search to state-level legislators (and governors)
+    query_params = { levels: "administrativeArea1", recursive: true, roles: roles, key: civic_api_key }


It would be nice if the query params that are the same in both methods were stated as shared defaults, maybe a method like

def self.query_params(**additional_params) { levels: "administrativeArea1", key: civic_api_key }.merge(additional_params) end

esoterik · 2023-01-28T02:02:39Z

db/schema.rb

@@ -354,7 +358,7 @@

  create_table "tweets", force: :cascade do |t|
    t.string  "target",        limit: 255
-    t.string  "message",       limit: 255
+    t.string  "message"


this should be removed from the diff

esoterik · 2023-01-28T02:05:01Z

spec/spec_helper.rb

@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@
  config.include Capybara::DSL
  config.include FeatureHelpers, type: :feature

-  WebMock.disable_net_connect!(allow_localhost: true)
+  WebMock.disable_net_connect!(allow_localhost: true, allow: "chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com")


ohhhhh this fixes one of the more annoying errors that I've run into so nicely!

enable state-level emails to be created in the admin panel and sent f…

ded6756

…rom a template generated by email actions

wtcruft commented Jan 18, 2023

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esoterik reviewed Jan 28, 2023

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wtcruft added 3 commits March 27, 2023 12:02

WIP code review response for state level emails

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Enable State-level Emails #903

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wtcruft commented Jan 18, 2023 •

edited

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wtcruft commented Jan 18, 2023 •

edited

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