Introduction of `geodatasets`¶

The geodatasets contains an API on top of a JSON with metadata of externally hosted datasets containing geospatial information useful for illustrative and educational purposes.

import geodatasets

What is the `geodatasets.data` object?¶

The geodatasets.data objects are stored as dictionaries (with attribute access for easy access), so we can explore them in Python (or using tab completion in an interactive session or as a collapsible inventory in Jupyter!):

Datasets are normally grouped by the provider.

Looking at a single dataset, for example “atlanta”, we can see this is a Dataset object, which behaves as a dict:

geodatasets.data.geoda.atlanta

geodatasets.Dataset

geoda.atlanta

url: https://geodacenter.github.io/data-and-lab//data/atlanta_hom.zip
license: NA
attribution: Center for Spatial Data Science, University of Chicago
description: Atlanta, GA region homicide counts and rates
geometry_type: Polygon
nrows: 90
ncols: 24
details: https://geodacenter.github.io/data-and-lab//atlanta_old/
hash: a33a76e12168fe84361e60c88a9df4856730487305846c559715c89b1a2b5e09
filename: atlanta_hom.zip
members: ['atlanta_hom/atl_hom.geojson']

A Dataset is then a dictionary with a few required entries, such as the url, with some additional metadata information (optional). These can be the attribution, size, license or description.

Downloading and caching¶

You can use geodatasets to download and cache individual datasets, or just retrieve the URL. Top-level API accepts a string that returns a matching Dataset from the Bunch if the name contains the same letters in the same order as the item’s name irrespective of the letter case, spaces, dashes and other characters.

geodatasets.get_url("geoda atlanta")

'https://geodacenter.github.io/data-and-lab//data/atlanta_hom.zip'

Or we can ask for a local path. If the file is already in cache, it is just returned. Otherwise, it gets downloaded first.

geodatasets.get_path("geoda atlanta")

Downloading file 'atlanta_hom.zip' from 'https://geodacenter.github.io/data-and-lab//data/atlanta_hom.zip' to '/home/docs/.cache/geodatasets'.

Extracting 'atlanta_hom/atl_hom.geojson' from '/home/docs/.cache/geodatasets/atlanta_hom.zip' to '/home/docs/.cache/geodatasets/atlanta_hom.zip.unzip'

'/home/docs/.cache/geodatasets/atlanta_hom.zip.unzip/atlanta_hom/atl_hom.geojson'

The same can be extracted via url and path properties of the Dataset.

geodatasets.data.geoda.atlanta.url

'https://geodacenter.github.io/data-and-lab//data/atlanta_hom.zip'

Retrieving the path optionally triggers file download as get_path.

geodatasets.data.geoda.atlanta.path

'/home/docs/.cache/geodatasets/atlanta_hom.zip.unzip/atlanta_hom/atl_hom.geojson'

Introduction of geodatasets¶

What is the geodatasets.data object?¶

Downloading and caching¶

Introduction of `geodatasets`¶

What is the `geodatasets.data` object?¶