get data for all block groups in a state

[lewis500]

Hi I want to be able to look at all the block groups in a state.

So for example to look at all the block groups in a county I would go:

c.acs5.state_county_blockgroup('NAME', states.AK.fips, '170', Census.ALL)
But if I try to reply the "county" argument with Census.ALL I get an error.

c.acs5.state_county_blockgroup('NAME', states.AK.fips,Census.ALL, Census.ALL)
Is there a way to do this?

[hamzaamjad]

@lewis500 There may be better ways to pull data for all blockgroups, but why not generate a list of counties first, and then iterate over that? See below as an example

from census import Census
from us import states
import pandas as pd

c = Census("YOUR_KEY_HERE")

stateCodes = states.mapping("fips", "name")

countyCodes = []
for state in stateCodes:
    temp = c.acs5.state_county("NAME", state, Census.ALL)
    countyCodes.append({state : temp})

censusBlockGroups = []
for state in countyCodes:
    for key, value in state.items():
        for element in value:
            censusBlockGroups.append(c.acs5.state_county_blockgroup("NAME", element["state"], element["county"], Census.ALL))

censusBlockGroups = [item for sublist in censusBlockGroups for item in sublist]
censusBlockGroups = pd.DataFrame(censusBlockGroups)

[wtadler]

I'm also interested in this—is there a way to do this without having to iterate over all counties?

Also, is there any way to use this package to get data from individual blocks, rather than block groups?

[fgregg]

@hamzaamjad is right. If we were to provide this method, we'd just use a version of the code they suggested.