FBOpen is an open API server, data import tools, and sample apps to help small businesses search for opportunities to work with the U.S. government.
The project began as an attempt to make it easier to search the content of FBO.gov, the U.S. government's system of record for opportunities to do business with the government. We downloaded the (XML) data from FBO's weekly data dump of opportunity listings, and loaded it into a Solr search server. Then we used a primitive crawler to download listings' attachments and load them into Solr -- something Solr makes easy thanks to their Tika/Solr Cell project.
Underneath the Google-style query page (/sample-www), we built a simple REST API (really a thin layer over Solr's API) so you can build your own query tools.
Then someone realized we didn't have to limit this server to FBO data. There's a second sample data loader that can be used to load data nightly from grants.gov, and the API allows you to post opportunities, too.
- Start by installing Solr. Instructions are in the README.md in
/solr-files. - Get the API server up and running. See the README.md in
/api. - Load data into the search index using the import tools in
/loaders-- or roll your own, or use the API's POST/v0/oppto post opportunities one at a time. - To run a simple query web page, try the sample app in
/sample-www.
- The BusinessUSA PIF team coded up a sample form specifically geared toward submitting or tweaking SBIR solicitations in FBOpen. The relevant code can be found here: https://github.com/GSA-OCSIT/hyabusa. Hyabusa is a test-bed Rails 4 app, and includes several other mini-applications, so look for the SbirSolicitationsController and related views.
- One of the BusinessUSA PIF's also coded up a sample site to showcase how SBIR.gov could function if FBOpen were the backend data source for the solicitation listings. That repo, as of this writing very much a work in progress, can be found here: https://github.com/arowla/sbiropen. This is a Python app built with the Flask microframework.
This project is brand new and very incomplete. No guarantees of data completeness or functionality are implied or should be assumed. There is lots to do!
This project constitutes an original work of the United States Government. This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. see the LICENSE file for more.