census_backup 0.1.8

Backup utilities.

censusdis/backup

This project is a command-line utility for bulk downloads of U.S. Census data. Documentation and examples are a little sparse, but we wanted to get this out so people who know what data sets and vintages they are interested in can start using it.

Installation

pip install census_backup

Usage Examples

General help and overview

census-backup --help

Download from a group across all available bulk geographies

This is the simplest way to use this tool. It will look for all available geographies for the given dataset and vintage, then download all variables in the specified group for every geography it can.

census-backup -d acs/acs5 -v 2020 -g B02001 -o ~/tmp/backup  --log INFO

The required arguments are:

• -d: the data set
• -v: the vintage
• -g: the variable group

The option arguments are:

• -o: output directory. The default is the current working directory.
• --log: logging level. INFO is useful to see what is happening.

Logging will also help you see what geographies the script was not able to download in bulk. The census API syntax does not allow all the bulk downloads one might like to do.

Download geometries that have state as a component

Sometimes we really only care about a specific set of geography levels. This example will download at the [state], [state, county], [state, county, tract] etc... levels.

census-backup -d acs/acs5 -v 2020 -g B02001 -G state -o ~/tmp/backup-states-and-below  --log INFO

Download state aggregated data only

This will not get geographies within the state. It will only get data aggregate at the state level. The + prefix says that state must be the last component of the geography, so it will not match [state, county] like it would without the +.

census-backup -d acs/acs5 -v 2020 -g B02001 -G +state -o ~/tmp/backup-states  --log INFO

Download county aggregated data within states only

This will not get geographies within the state. It will only get data aggregate at the state level.

census-backup -d acs/acs5 -v 2020 -g B02001 -G state +county -o ~/tmp/backup-state-counties --log INFO

More Help

census-backup --help