Political Accountability App

📌 Overview

The Political Accountability App is designed to track and store data about politicians, their voting history, proposed bills, news articles, and media coverage. The goal is to provide transparency by aggregating data from various sources and presenting it in a structured manner.

🏗️ Architecture

This application is built using a microservices approach, leveraging multiple technologies to store and process data efficiently.

Backend Stack

• Java/Kotlin (No Spring Boot) – Core backend services using Dropwizard for the API Gateway
• Gradle (Kotlin DSL) – Build tool
• PostgreSQL – Structured data storage (politicians, voting records, bills)
• Elasticsearch – Full-text search for news articles and social media content.
• MinIO (S3-Compatible) – Media storage for videos, audio, and images.
• Kafka – Event-driven architecture for data ingestion and processing
• Redis – Caching frequently accessed data

Microservices Structure

Module	Purpose
api-gateway	Exposes REST endpoints using Dropwizard; routes client requests.
ingestion-service	Scrapes data from news sources, government APIs, and social media
processing-service	Analyzes data, applies NLP for fact-checking, and enriches records
storage-service	Handles data storage (PostgreSQL/managed via Supabase), search (Elasticsearch), and media storage (MinIO). Also manages backend services via Dropwizard Managed objects.
event-streaming	Processes Kafka events for real-time updates.
common	Contains shared models, utilities, and configuration classes.

🔹 Database Schema

Politicians Table

CREATE TABLE politicians (
    id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
    full_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    party VARCHAR(50),
    state VARCHAR(50),
    office VARCHAR(100),
    start_date DATE,
    end_date DATE NULL,
    profile_image_url TEXT,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW()
);

Voting Records Table

CREATE TABLE voting_records (
    id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
    politician_id UUID REFERENCES politicians(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
    bill_id UUID REFERENCES bills(id),
    vote_type VARCHAR(20) CHECK (vote_type IN ('YEA', 'NAY', 'ABSTAIN')),
    vote_date DATE NOT NULL,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW()
);

News Articles Table

CREATE TABLE news_articles (
    id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
    politician_id UUID REFERENCES politicians(id) ON DELETE SET NULL,
    title TEXT NOT NULL,
    source VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    published_date TIMESTAMP,
    url TEXT UNIQUE NOT NULL,
    content TEXT NOT NULL,
    created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT NOW()
);

🚀 Running the Application

1️⃣ Set Up PostgreSQL

docker run --name postgres -e POSTGRES_USER=admin -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret -p 5432:5432 -d postgres

2️⃣ Set Up MinIO for Media Storage

docker run -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 \
  -e "MINIO_ROOT_USER=admin" -e "MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD=secretpass" \
  quay.io/minio/minio server /data --console-address ":9001"

3️⃣ Run Kafka for Event Streaming

docker-compose up -d kafka zookeeper

4️⃣ Build and Run Services

./gradlew clean build
./gradlew :api-gateway:run

📡 API Endpoints

Get Politician Details

GET /api/politicians/{id}

Response:

{
  "id": "1234-5678",
  "full_name": "John Doe",
  "party": "Independent",
  "state": "NY",
  "office": "Senator",
  "start_date": "2018-01-01",
  "end_date": null
}

Search News Articles

GET /api/news?query=tax+reform

👥 Contributors

• Joshua Covington – Lead Developer

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.