census-map-downloader

Easily download U.S. census maps

Installation

pipenv install census-map-downloader

Command line usage

Usage: censusmapdownloader [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Easily download U.S. census maps

Options:
  --data-dir TEXT  The folder where you want to download the data
  --year INTEGER   The vintage of data to download. By default it gets the
                   latest year. Not all data are available for every year.

  --help           Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  blocks                   Download blocks
  congress-carto           Download cartographic congressional districts
  counties                 Download counties
  counties-carto           Download cartographic counties
  countysubdivision        Download cartographic county subdivisions
  legislative-lower-carto  Download cartographic state legislative...
  legislative-upper-carto  Download cartographic state legislative...
  places                   Download places
  states-carto             Download cartographic states
  tracts                   Download tracts
  zctas                    Download ZCTAs

Examples

Here's an example of downloading all counties

censusmapdownloader counties

You can specify the download directory with --data-dir

censusmapdownloader --data-dir ./my-special-folder/ counties

Contributing

Install dependencies for development

pipenv install --dev

Run tests

pipenv run python test.py

Adding additional years to a dataset

Downloader classes for different geography types are defined in modules of {code}census_map_downloader.geotypes. For example, the downloader for counties is {code}census_map_downloader.geotypes.counties.CountiesDownloader.

If the URL and fields in a shapefile are the same as those for years that are already supported, you can just add the year to the {code}YEAR_LIST attribute.

If the fields are the same, but the URL changes between groups of years, add logic to the {code}url property method of the downloader classes to alter the URL based on {code}self.year.

If the fields and URL change from year to year, consider creating classes for each year and delegating to {code}census_map_downloader.geotypes.tracts.TractsDownloader is an example of a class that uses this approach.

Developing the CLI

The command-line interface is implemented using Click and setuptools. To install it locally for development inside your virtual environment, run the following installation command, as prescribed by the Click documentation.

pipenv run pip install --editable .

Links

• Issues: github.com/datadesk/census-map-downloader/issues
• Packaging: pypi.python.org/pypi/census-map-downloader
• Testing: github.com/datadesk/census-map-downloader/actions