Download GEO txt file(s) with geo information for ACS

Download text file from US Census Bureau with geographic information for American Community Survey. The geo file is used to join data file(s) to FIPS/GEOID/NAME/SUMLEVEL/CKEY. Used by get.acs()

Usage

download.geo(
  mystates,
  end.year = acsdefaultendyearhere_func(),
  folder = getwd(),
  testing = FALSE,
  attempts = 5,
  silent = FALSE
)

Arguments

mystates: vector of character 2-letter State abbreviations specifying which are needed
end.year: Specifies end year of 5-year summary file such as "2020"
folder: folder to use for saving files - default is current working directory
testing: Default to FALSE. If TRUE, provides info on progress of download.
attempts: Default is 5, specifies how many tries (maximum) for unzipping before trying to redownload and then give up.
silent: Optional, default is FALSE. Whether progress info should be sent to standard output (like the screen)

Value

Side effect is downloading the file.

Details

For information on this new Summary File format visit:

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data/summary-file.html

Downloads to the current working directory unless another folder is specified. In contrast to the data files, the geo file is not zipped so does not have to be unzipped once downloaded. Key functions used:

url.to.find.zipfile()
geofile()
data(lookup.states, package="proxistat")

Examples

 if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
   download.geo("de")
   download.geo( c("pr", "dc") )
 } # }