Questions at Council meetings

This data set contains questions raised by Members on the work of the Government at Council meetings since the Fifth Legislative Council. It consists of subjects of the questions, Members who raised the questions and hyperlinks to the corresponding sections of Hansard. For use of the data provided by the Legislative Council, please note the disclaimer and copyright notice.

The information can be obtained in the form of open data via web application programming interface (API) as described in this page.

For enquiry, please e-mail to enquiry@legco.gov.hk.

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Usage tips of Web Application Programming Interface (API)

Note:
When Chinese characters are used in a web api command, please perform URL encoding for it first, or use a browser such as Chrome that can encode Chinese characters automatically.

The web api provides the following information:

ViewOralQuestionsEng (Oral Questions)
ViewWrittenQuestionsEng (Written Questions)

Corresponding to the above information, the open data web api can be run at:

https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewOralQuestionsEng (JSON format)
https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewOralQuestionsEng?$format=xml (XML format)

https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewWrittenQuestionsEng (JSON format)
https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewWrittenQuestionsEng?$format=xml (XML format)

To get the meta data schema of the dataset, please run the following:

https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/$metadata

The following query string options can be applied:

$format - specify whether the data to be returned in json or xml format, e.g. $format=json
$top=N - select only the first N entries of the set, where N is a positive integer, e.g. $top=10
$skip=N - select only the remaining entries (starting with Entry N+1) where N is a positive integer, e.g. $skip=10
$orderby - what values are used to order the retrieved data, e.g. $orderby=MeetingDate
$select - select specific fields to be returned, e.g. $select=MeetingDate,SubjectName,MemberName,HansardFileURL
$filter - select specific entries according to provided conditions, e.g. $filter=substringof('Council Meeting',SubjectName) eq true
$inlinecount - specify "$inlinecount=allpages" to include the total number of records in the returned data
$expand - link up data

For available operators and functions to be used with $filter option, please refer to the documentation of the Open Data Protocol.

Examples

The following examples illustrate some of the ways to retrieve data according to the Open Data Protocol.

To select the 301st to 320th oral questions records (by default in JSON format):
https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewOralQuestionsEng?$skip=300&$top=20
To select the meeting date, English subject and Member in XML format from the first 20 oral questions records ordered by the meeting date:
https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewOralQuestionsEng?$top=20&$format=xml&$select=MeetingDate,SubjectName,MemberName&
$orderby=MeetingDate
To select all oral questions with the subject containing "council meeting" in XML format, together with the total number of records that match the criteria:
https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewOralQuestionsEng?$format=xml&$inlinecount=allpages&$filter=substringof('council meeting',SubjectName) eq true
To select all oral questions raised by Dr Hon LAM Tai-fai in XML format, together with the total number of records that match the criteria:
https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewOralQuestionsEng?$format=xml&$inlinecount=allpages&$filter=substringof('LAM TAI-FAI',MemberName) eq true
To select all oral questions raised on 17 Oct 2012 in XML format, together with the total number of records that match the criteria:
https://app.legco.gov.hk/QuestionsDB/odata/ViewOralQuestionsEng?$format=xml&$inlinecount=allpages&$filter=year(MeetingDate) eq 2012 and month(MeetingDate) eq 10 and day(MeetingDate) eq 17

Data Resources

Oral questions of the Seventh Legislative Council (Chinese version)

XML JSON

Oral questions of the Sixth Legislative Council (2016 - 2021) (Chinese version)

XML JSON

Oral questions of the Fifth Legislative Council (2012 - 2016) (Chinese version)

XML JSON

Written questions of the Seventh Legislative Council (Chinese version)

XML JSON

Written questions of the Sixth Legislative Council (2016 - 2021) (Chinese version)

XML JSON

Written questions of the Fifth Legislative Council (2012 - 2016) (Chinese version)

XML JSON

Oral questions of the Seventh Legislative Council (English version)

XML JSON

Oral questions of the Sixth Legislative Council (2016 - 2021) (English version)

XML JSON

Oral questions of the Fifth Legislative Council (2012 - 2016) (English version)

XML JSON

Written questions of the Seventh Legislative Council (English version)

XML JSON

Written questions of the Sixth Legislative Council (2016 - 2021) (English version)

XML JSON

Written questions of the Fifth Legislative Council (2012 - 2016) (English version)

XML JSON