pdpc-decisions 1.3.2
Tools to extract and compile enforcement decisions from the Singapore Personal Data Protection Commission
Requires Python: >=3.8

# pdpc-decisions

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This package contains utilities which allow you to create a corpus of decisions from the 
Personal Data Protection Commission of Singapore's 
[Data Protection Enforcement Cases](https://www.pdpc.gov.sg/Commissions-Decisions).

The primary use of such a corpus is for studying, possibly using data science tools such as 
natural language processing.

It currently has the following features:

* Visit the Personal Data Protection Commission of Singapore's 
[Data Protection Enforcement Cases](https://www.pdpc.gov.sg/Commissions-Decisions)
and compile a table of decisions with information from the summaries provided by the PDPC for each case.
* Save this table of decisions as CSV
* Download all the PDF files of the decisions from the PDPC's website. 
If the decision is not a PDF, collects the information provided on the decision web page and saves it as a text file.
* Convert the PDF files into text files

## Features provided by scraper

* Published date
* Respondent
* Title
* Summary
* URL of PDF of decision

The features are discovered by passing `--extras` to the command.
* **[Extras]** Citation
* **[Extras]** Basic enforcement information (Financial penalty, warning, directions)
* **[Extras]** References (referred by, referring to)

## What pdpc-decisions uses
* Python 3
* PDF Miner
* Selenium
* Chrome
* spaCy

## Installation

### Docker Image

I dockerised the application for my personal ease of use.
It is probably the easiest and most straight-forward way 
to use the application and I recommend it too.
The dockerised application also contains all pre-requisites
so there is no need for any manual installs.

You need to have docker installed. 
Pull the image from [docker hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/houfu/pdpc-decisions).
```shell script
docker pull houfu/pdpc-decisions
```

After that you can run the image and pass commands and arguments to it.
For example, if you would like the application to do all actions.

```shell script
docker run houfu/pdpc-decisions all
```

This isn't clever because downloads will be stored in the docker image 
and not easily accessed. Bind a volume in your filesystem and 
use the `--root` option to direct the application
to save the files there. For example:

```shell script
docker run \ 
  --mount type=bind,source="$(pwd)"/target,target=/code/download \ # Target directory must exist!
  houfu/pdpc-decisions \
  all \
  --root /code/download/
```

### Local install
* Install via PIP

```shell script
pip install pdpc-decisions
```

* Once the package is installed, used the command line tool `pdpc-decisions` to use the script.

* If necessary, install [Chrome](https://www.google.com/chrome/) 
and [ChromeDriver](https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/) for Selenium to work.

The main entry point for the script is `pdpcdecision.py`


## Usage

The script accepts the following actions and options:

Accepts the following actions.

  "`all`"       Does all the actions (scraping the website, saving a csv,
  downloading all files and creating a corpus).

  "`corpus`"    Converts PDF format of decisions into plain text files.

  "`csv`"      Save the items gathered by the scraper as a csv file.

  "`files`"     Downloads all the decisions from the PDPC website into a
  folder.

Options:
  
  `--csv FILE`            Filename for saving the items gathered by scraper as a
                        csv file.  [default: scrape_results.csv]
  
  `--download DIRECTORY`  Destination folder for downloads of all PDF/web pages
                        of PDPC decisions  [default: download/]
  
  `--corpus DIRECTORY`    Destination folder for PDPC decisions converted to
                        text files  [default: corpus/]
  `-r, --root DIRECTORY`  Root directory for downloads and files  [default:
                        Your current working directory]
  
  `--extras/--no-extras`         Add extra features to the data collected. This increases processing time. This feature is ignored if action is `files` or `downloads`. 
                                (Experimental and requires reading of actual decisions)
                                [default: *False*, '--no-extras']
  
  `--extra-corpus/--no-extra-corpus`    Enable experimental features for corpus. 
  This increases processing time.
  
  `--verbose`               Verbose output
  
  `--help`                Show this message and exit.

## Contact

Feel free to let me have your suggestions, comments or issues using the issue tracker or by 
[emailing me](mailto:houfu@outlook.sg).

It would also be nice to hear how you have used this corpus by using the above contacts.