Texecuted

Using node.js to scrape the Texas Department of Criminal Justice list of executed inmates from http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html

Background

I came across this list via reddit r/dataisbeautiful and a great word cloud derived from death row inmates’ last statements(written and spoken). This list would be a good exercise to scrape and wrangle the data into a usable JSON dataset.

Scrape, Transform, and Output

Dependencies

• request
• cheerio

Install

npm install request --save

npm install cheerio --save

Get the Data

// Add modules
var request = require('request');
var $ = require('cheerio');
var fs = require('fs');

// State of Texas executed list
var url = 'http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html';

function Inmate() {
};

function parseRows(url, done) {
  request(url, function(err, res, html) {
    if (err) return log(err);
    var parsedHtml = $.load(html);
    var json = [];
    parsedHtml('tr').map(function(i, elem) {
      if (i > 0) {
        var row = elem.children.filter(function(d) { return d.type === 'tag' });
        var inmate = new Inmate;
        row.forEach(function(item, index, arr) {
          var len = arr.length;
          attrInmate(index, item, inmate, function(d) {
            json.push(d);
          });
        });
      }
    }).end(done(json));
  });
}

function attrInmate(index, attr, inmate, done) {
  if (index === 0) {
    inmate.execution = attr.children[0].data;
  }
  if (index === 3) {
    inmate.lastName = attr.children[0].data;
  }
  if (index === 4) {
    inmate.firstName = attr.children[0].data;
  }
  if (index === 5) {
    inmate.tdcjNumber = attr.children[0].data;
  }
  if (index === 6) {
    inmate.age = attr.children[0].data;
  }
  if (index === 7) {
    inmate.executionDate = attr.children[0].data;
  }
  if (index === 8) {
    inmate.race = attr.children[0].data;
  }
  if (index === 9) {
    inmate.county = attr.children[0].data;
    done(inmate)
  }
}

function log() {
  var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);
  args.forEach(function(item) {
    console.log(item)
  })
}

// parseRows('http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_info/villegasjoselast.html')
parseRows(url, function(json) {
  var data = JSON.stringify(json, null, 2);
  fs.writeFile('./executed.json', data, function(err) {
    if (err) return log(err);
    log('Finished')
  })
});

Output executed.json

[
  {
    "execution": "515",
    "lastName": "Villegas",
    "firstName": "Jose",
    "tdcjNumber": "999417",
    "age": "39",
    "executionDate": "04/16/2014",
    "race": "Hispanic",
    "county": "Nueces"
  }, ...]

Checkout the full dataset on Github https://github.com/apburnes/texecuted