Represent is the open database of Canadian elected representatives and electoral districts. It provides a RESTful API to boundary, representative, and postcode resources.

This repository provides an API to geographic boundaries. It is based on the Chicago Tribune's django-boundaryservice.

The represent-canada repository provides a full sample app, and points to plugins which add representative, postcode, and map features to this boundaries API.

API documentation is available at represent.opennorth.ca/api/.

Install the package:

python setup.py install

Add boundaries to INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py.

Add the following to your urls.py:

(r'', include('boundaries.urls')),

Run python manage.py syncdb (or migrate if you use South).

By default, shapefiles are expected to be in subdirectories of [project_dir]/data/shapefiles, though this can be configured via the BOUNDARIES_SHAPEFILES_DIR setting.

To load data, run

python manage.py loadshapefiles

This command loads every file for which it can find a definition. It looks for definitions in files ending with definition.py or definitions.py in BOUNDARIES_SHAPEFILE_DIR or its subdirectories.

See the sample definition in definition.example.py.

Note that it's a good idea to keep DEBUG off during this process or Django will try to remember every SQL command.

The starting point for exploring the API resources is /boundary-sets. From there you'll see references to additional URLs to look at.

Please use GitHub Issues for bug reports. You can also contact [email protected].