CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rjsonapireadr
matt_lnrd
matt_lnrd

Reputation: 339

How should I be reading Census API data into R

I am working to read Census data into R using the agency's API, but I'm struggling to get it to read in the right format.

The URL that I'm trying to read in: https://api.census.gov/data/timeseries/eits/mwts?get=data_type_code,time_slot_id,seasonally_adj,category_code,cell_value,error_data&time=2012

And the format of that data if you just look at it in the web browser:

enter image description here

The closest I've gotten is with this series of code:

library(jsonlite)
data <- url("https://api.census.gov/data/timeseries/eits/mwts? get=data_type_code,time_slot_id,seasonally_adj,category_code,cell_value,error_data&time=2012")
    
    
datanew <- fromJSON(data)

But as you can see that's still not in a good dataframe format.

enter image description here

Is there an easier way that I'm missing? Thanks.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 220

Answers (1)

rbasa
rbasa

Reputation: 462

I may be wrong but that API returns an improper use of JSON. Anyway, you can coerce datanew to a data frame, but that leaves you with the column labels in row 1. So you use row 1 to name the columns then remove row 1.

df <- as.data.frame(datanew)
names(df) <- df[1, ]
df <- df[-1, ]

After which you propably want to cast each column to appropriate data types.

Upvotes: 1

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