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Census Data API: step-by-step building blocks for queries
Summary
Tyson Weister of the U.S. Census Bureau demonstrated how to construct API requests: start with api.census.gov/data, choose the dataset, set get= variables, specify geography (wildcards allowed), and append an API key; he used a 2010 SF1 example for Idaho tracts.
Tyson Weister, a data dissemination specialist on the Census team for data.census.gov and the API, opened the API segment by emphasizing that the API is RESTful and supports web-browser requests. "What I'm here to talk about today is the census data API," he said, and walked attendees through the discovery tool where nearly 1,780 detailed dataset entries are listed.
Weister laid out a seven-step process for building requests: start with api.census.gov/data, add the dataset path (for example /2010/dec/sf1), add ?get= and the comma-separated variable list, specify geographies (using wildcards as needed), and include &key=your_api_key. He demonstrated a working example that returned total housing units for all census tracts in Idaho from the 2010 Summary File 1, showing an example row that reported 2,105 total housing units in Census Tract 15 in Bannock County, Idaho (2010 SF1). He also noted that the discovery tool provides example queries and a variables list to simplify building correct queries.
Weister concluded by recommending the discovery tool and dataset examples as the starting point for constructing reproducible API requests.
