census_pgeoloader

Command line utility to download Census TIGER/Line shapefiles by state from the U.S. Census Bureau and aggregate them into a single table in a PostGIS-enabled database.

Requirements

Uses shp2pgsql. Assumes PostgreSQL + PostGIS.

To install

$ pip install census_pgeoloader

To use

Pass a connection URI to your PostgreSQL database as well as the states you'd like to aggregate. This will dowload tract-level shapefiles by default.

$ pgeoloader postgres://postgres@localhost:5432/database KS MO TX VA ...

Valid values for states are FIPS codes, postal abbreviations or names. Pass + to collect all states.

Options

Options:
  -t, --table TEXT               Name of table to create in DB. Default is
                                 "census_shapes".
  -p, --temp TEXT                Directory to download files to. Default is
                                 "./shapefiles"
  -y, --year TEXT                Year. Default is "2016".
  -g, --geo [tract|group|block]  Geographic unit. Default is "tract".
  -s, --srid TEXT                Specify an SRID transform, e.g., "4269:4326".
                                 Default is "4269".
  --help                         Show this message and exit.

Notes:

• --table Drops any existing table by that name in the database.
• --geo Can pull tracts, block groups or blocks.
• --srid Default SRID should be 4269, but you can specify a transform with this option as available in shp2pgsql.

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