Data extraction scripts for the Nature of EU Rules project.

Given a list of CELEX identifiers for EU legislation, the eu_rules_fulltext_extractor.py script downloads the corresponding documents for the legislation from the EURLEX website. It stores the files in two folders: one for HTML documents and one for PDF documents. Some older documents are only available in PDF format on the website. As a first priority, the script tries to download the HTML version of a document if available (because this format is easier to parse later on). If there is no HTML version available, it extracts the PDF version. If neither the HTML nor PDF versions could be extracted for whatever reason, the script keeps a list of CELEX identifiers which encountered errors when downloading.

Given a list of CELEX identifiers for EU legislation, the eu_rules_metadata_extractor.py script downloads the metadata for the corresponding legislative documents downloaded by eu_rules_fulltext_extractor.py. The metadata is extracted from the EU publications office's CELLAR SPARQL interface. If any information is missing in CELLAR, it alternatively tries to scrape the information from the EURLEX webpage for that legislation. The resulting metadata is stored in an output CSV file. Below is a table describing the metadata we extract for this project:

• Python 3.9.12+
• A tool for checking out a Git repository.
• Input CSV file with single column (no header) of CELEX identifiers for EU legislation

1. Get a copy of the code:

    git clone [email protected]:nature-of-eu-rules/data-extraction.git
   

2. Change into the data-extraction/ directory:

    cd data-extraction/
   

3. Create new virtual environment e.g:

    python -m venv path/to/virtual/environment/folder/
   

4. Activate new virtual environment e.g. for MacOSX users type:

    source path/to/virtual/environment/folder/bin/activate
   

5. Install required libraries for the script in this virtual environment:

    pip install -r requirements.txt
   

6. Check the command line arguments required to run the script by typing:

    python eu_rules_fulltext_extractor.py -h
    
    OUTPUT >
    
    usage: eu_rules_fulltext_extractor.py [-h] -in INPUT -htp HTMLPATH -pdp PDFPATH -prp    PROBPATH
   
    EURLEX PDF and HTML legislative documents downloader
   
    optional arguments:
    -h, --help            show this help message and exit
   
    required arguments:
    -in INPUT, --input INPUT
                    Path to input CSV file (single column, no header, list of celex identifiers). Find more info about CELEX identifiers here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/help/eurlex-content/celex-
                    number.html
                    
    -htp HTMLPATH, --htmlpath HTMLPATH
                    Path to directory where to store the extracted EU legislative documents from EURLEX (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/) in HTML format. Each downloaded document will be named only with the CELEX identifier e.g.
                    32012R0145.html
                    
    -pdp PDFPATH, --pdfpath PDFPATH
                    Path to directory where to store the extracted EU legislative documents from EURLEX (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/) in PDF format. Each downloaded document will be named only with the CELEX identifier e.g.
                    32013R0148.pdf
                    
    -prp PROBPATH, --probpath PROBPATH
                    Path to a directory. After execution, this script will write a CSV file called 'problematic-celexes.csv' to this directory containing a list of CELEX identifiers for legislation that could
                    not be downloaded for whatever reason
   

7. Example usage:

    python eu_rules_fulltext_extractor.py --input path/to/celex_nums.csv --htmlpath path/to/htmls/ --pdfpath path/to/pdfs/ --probpath path/to/problems/
   

1. Get a copy of the code:

    git clone [email protected]:nature-of-eu-rules/data-extraction.git
   

2. Change into the data-extraction/ directory:

    cd data-extraction/
   

3. Create new virtual environment e.g:

    python -m venv path/to/virtual/environment/folder/
   

4. Activate new virtual environment e.g. for MacOSX users type:

    source path/to/virtual/environment/folder/bin/activate
   

5. Install required libraries for the script in this virtual environment:

    pip install -r requirements.txt
   

6. Check the command line arguments required to run the script by typing:

    python eu_rules_metadata_extractor.py -h
    
    OUTPUT >
    
    usage: eu_rules_metadata_extractor.py [-h] -in INPUT -out OUTPUT
   
    EURLEX PDF and HTML legislative documents metadata downloader
   
    optional arguments:
    -h, --help            show this help message and exit
   
    required arguments:
    -in INPUT, --input INPUT
                            Path to input CSV file (single column, no header, list of celex identifiers). Find more info about CELEX identifiers here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/help/eurlex-content/celex-
                            number.html
    -out OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                            Path to a CSV file to store the metadata in e.g. 'path/to/metadata.csv'.
   

7. Example usage:

    python eu_rules_metadata_extractor.py --input path/to/celex_nums.csv --output path/to/metadata.csv
   

Copyright (2023) Kody Moodley, The Netherlands eScience Center

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.