us 0.6

US state meta information and other fun stuff

A package for easily working with US and state metadata.

• all US states and territories

• postal abbreviations

• Associated Press style abbreviations

• FIPS codes

• capitals

• years of statehood

• phonetic state name lookup

• URLs to shapefiles for state, census, congressional districts, counties, and census tracts

Congratulations, DC. As far as this package is concerned, you’ve got statehood.

Installation

As per usual:

pip install us

Features

Easy access to state information:

>>> import us
>>> us.states.MD
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.MD.fips
u'24'
>>> us.states.MD.name
u'Maryland'

Includes territories too:

>>> us.states.VI.name
u'Virgin Islands'
>>> us.states.VI.is_territory
True
>>> us.states.MD.is_territory
False

List of all (actual) states:

>>> us.states.STATES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,...
>>> us.states.TERRITORIES
[<State:American Samoa>, <State:Guam>, <State:Northern Mariana Islands>,...

And the whole shebang, if you want it:

>>> us.states.STATES_AND_TERRITORIES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:American Samoa>,...

For convenience, STATES, TERRITORIES, and STATES_AND_TERRITORIES can be accessed directly from the us module:

>>> us.states.STATES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,...
>>> us.STATES
[<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,...

The state lookup method allows matching by FIPS code, abbreviation, and name:

>>> us.states.lookup('24')
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.lookup('MD')
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.lookup('md')
<State:Maryland>
>>> us.states.lookup('maryland')
<State:Maryland>

And for those days that you just can’t remember how to spell Mississippi, we’ve got phonetic name matching too:

>>> us.states.lookup('misisipi')
<State:Mississippi>

Shapefiles

You want shapefiles too? Gotcha covered.

>>> shpurls = us.states.MD.shapefile_urls()
>>> for region, url in shpurls.items():
...   print "%s: %s" % (region, url)
...
county: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_24_county10.zip
state: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/STATE/2010/tl_2010_24_state10.zip
cd: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/CD/111/tl_2010_24_cd111.zip
zcta: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/ZCTA5/2010/tl_2010_24_zcta510.zip
tract: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TRACT/2010/tl_2010_24_tract10.zip

The shapefile_urls() method on the State object generates shapefile URLs for the following regions:

• state

• county

• congressional district

• zcta

• census tract

If you know what region you want, you can explicitly request it:

>>> us.states.MD.shapefile_urls('county')
u'http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_24_county10.zip'

Mappings

Mappings between various state attributes are a common need. The mapping() method will generate a lookup between two specified fields.

>>> us.states.mapping('fips', 'abbr')
{u'30': u'MT', u'54': u'WV', u'42': u'PA', u'48': u'TX', u'45': u'SC',...
>>> us.states.mapping('abbr', 'name')
{u'WA': u'Washington', u'VA': u'Virginia', u'DE': u'Delaware',...

CLI

When you need to know state information RIGHT AWAY, there’s the states script.

$ states md

*** The great state of Maryland (MD) ***

  FIPS code: 24

  other attributes:
    statehood_year: 1788
    ap_abbr: Md.
    name_metaphone: MRLNT
    capital: Annapolis

  shapefiles:
    county: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/COUNTY/2010/tl_2010_24_county10.zip
    state: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/STATE/2010/tl_2010_24_state10.zip
    cd: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/CD/111/tl_2010_24_cd111.zip
    zcta: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/ZCTA5/2010/tl_2010_24_zcta510.zip
    tract: http://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TRACT/2010/tl_2010_24_tract10.zip

Contributing

Your contributions are welcomed!

State data is stored in data.db and pickled using the build.py script. If you modify data.db, please be sure to run the build script before submitting a pull request.

Any changes other than additions to data.db should come with appropriate tests in test.py. Also check to see if the states CLI script should be modified to accommodate your change.

Changelog

0.6

• add AP-style state abbreviations

• use jellyfish instead of Metaphone package

• update to requests v1.0.4 for tests

• Python 3.3 compatibility

0.5

• fix state abbreviation for Nebraska

0.4

• add state capitals

• add years of statehood

0.3

• add mapping method to generate dicts of arbitrary fields

0.2

• add command line script for quick access to state data

0.1

• initial release

• state names and abbreviations

• FIPS codes

• lookup() method

• shapefile URLs for various regions