Skip to contents

Download an IPUMS data extract via the IPUMS API and write to disk.

Learn more about the IPUMS API in vignette("ipums-api").

Usage

download_extract(
  extract,
  download_dir = getwd(),
  overwrite = FALSE,
  progress = TRUE,
  api_key = Sys.getenv("IPUMS_API_KEY")
)

Arguments

extract

One of:

  • An ipums_extract object

  • The data collection and extract number formatted as a string of the form "collection:number" or as a vector of the form c("collection", number)

  • An extract number to be associated with your default IPUMS collection. See set_ipums_default_collection()

For a list of codes used to refer to each collection, see ipums_data_collections().

download_dir

Path to the directory where the files should be written. Defaults to current working directory.

overwrite

If TRUE, overwrite any conflicting files that already exist in download_dir. Defaults to FALSE.

progress

If TRUE, output progress bar showing the status of the download request. Defaults to TRUE.

api_key

API key associated with your user account. Defaults to the value of the IPUMS_API_KEY environment variable. See set_ipums_api_key().

Value

The path(s) to the files required to read the data requested in the extract, invisibly.

For NHGIS, paths will be named with either "data" (for tabular data files) or "shape" (for spatial data files) to indicate the type of data the file contains.

Details

For NHGIS extracts, data files and GIS files (shapefiles) will be saved in separate .zip archives. download_extract() will return a character vector including the file paths to all downloaded files.

For microdata extracts, only the file path to the downloaded .xml DDI file will be returned, as it is sufficient for reading the data provided in the associated .gz data file.

See also

read_ipums_micro() or read_nhgis() to read tabular data from an IPUMS extract.

read_ipums_sf() to read spatial data from an IPUMS extract.

ipums_list_files() to list files in an IPUMS extract.

Examples

usa_extract <- define_extract_usa(
  description = "2013-2014 ACS Data",
  samples = c("us2013a", "us2014a"),
  variables = c("SEX", "AGE", "YEAR")
)

if (FALSE) {
submitted_extract <- submit_extract(usa_extract)

downloadable_extract <- wait_for_extract(submitted_extract)

# For microdata, the path to the DDI .xml codebook file is provided.
usa_xml_file <- download_extract(downloadable_extract)

# Load with a `read_ipums_micro_*()` function
usa_data <- read_ipums_micro(usa_xml_file)

# You can also download previous extracts with their collection and number:
nhgis_files <- download_extract("nhgis:1")

# NHGIS extracts return a path to both the tabular and spatial data files,
# as applicable.
nhgis_data <- read_nhgis(data = nhgis_files["data"])

# Load NHGIS spatial data
nhgis_geog <- read_ipums_sf(data = nhgis_files["shape"])
}