Work-in-progress parser for .fec files. Inspired by:

Only FEC filings with version 8.3 and 8.4 are supported, though older versions may work in certain commands.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/asg017/libfec/releases/latest/download/fec-cli-installer.sh | sh

Or download the CLI directly from a recent release.

libfec export FEC-1813847 -o virginia.db

This will download all the itemizations from this FEC filing and export them to a SQLite database at virginia.db. The generated SQLite database will have the following tables:

libfec_H1
libfec_H2
libfec_H3
libfec_H4
libfec_SA11AI
libfec_SA11C
libfec_SA12
libfec_SB21B
libfec_SB28A
libfec_SB29
libfec_SB30B
libfec_TEXT
libfec_filings

A new table is created for every "form type" for all itemizations. The libfec_SA* ones refer to "Schedule A" itemizations, aka "receipts" or contributions.

If you only care about Schedule A itemizations, you can pass in the --target schedule-a flag like so:

libfec export FEC-1813847 --target schedule-a -o virginia.db

Now there will be a single libfec_schedule_a that consolidates all Schedule A itemizations into a single table. This is probably what you want if you're doing stories like "who has donated to this PAC/campaign".

You can provide multiple FEC filing IDs to the libfec command line:

libfec export FEC-1813847 FEC-1813838 FEC-1813835 --target schedule-a -o project.db

Alternatively, you can provide a text file to a list of FEC IDs instead of typing them out one-by-one. A new ID must appear on it's own line. Blank lines and lines that start with "#" are ignored.

# inside input.txt
 FEC-1813847

 FEC-1813838

 FEC-1813835

libfec export -i input.txt --target schedule-a -o project.db

You can provide a filing as a file, URL, or ID to libfec. If it's a URL or ID, then libfec will download it from the FEC website.

All these commands are functionaly equivalent:

# downloads the FEC-1813847 filings from the fec website
libfec export FEC-1813847 --target schedule-a -o project.db
# uses the already downloaded file called 1813847.fec
libfec export 1813847.fec --target schedule-a -o project.db
# downloads directly from the provided URL
libfec export https://docquery.fec.gov/dcdev/posted/1813847.fec --target schedule-a -o project.db