bfs_get_catalog_data: Search the BFS data catalog

In BFS: Get Data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office

Search the BFS data catalog

Description

Search the datasets of the BFS catalog (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/catalogue.html, article type "Data") that can be downloaded with bfs_get_data().

Usage

bfs_get_catalog_data(
  language = "de",
  title = NULL,
  extended_search = NULL,
  spatial_division = NULL,
  prodima = NULL,
  inquiry = NULL,
  institution = NULL,
  publishing_year_start = NULL,
  publishing_year_end = NULL,
  order_nr = NULL,
  limit = 1000,
  article_model = 900033,
  article_model_group = 900029,
  return_raw = FALSE
)

Arguments

language	Language of the catalog: "de" (default), "fr", "it" or "en".
title	Text to search in the titles.
extended_search	Text to search in the titles, BFS number and summaries.
spatial_division	Spatial division of the datasets: "Switzerland", "Cantons", "Districts", "Communes", "Other spatial divisions" or "International".
prodima	Theme number(s) of the BFS, e.g. 900212 for "Education and science". See the "Data catalog and PXWeb datasets" article for the list.
inquiry	Inquiry (survey) id.
institution	Institution id.
publishing_year_start, publishing_year_end	First and last publishing year.
order_nr	BFS number, e.g. "px-x-1502040100_131".
limit	Maximum number of results (1000 by default). A message tells you when the catalog has as many results as limit.
article_model, article_model_group	Article type ids of the DAM API. The defaults select the "Data" (or "Tables") article type; you don't need to change them.
return_raw	If TRUE, return the catalog as returned by the API, with all its metadata in nested data frames.

Details

The English and Italian catalogs have fewer datasets than the German and French ones. Arguments accept several values, e.g. prodima = c(900210, 900212).

Value

A tibble with the columns:

title

Title of the dataset.

language

Language of the catalog.

number_bfs

BFS number, to use in bfs_get_data().

number_asset

Asset number, to use in bfs_download_asset().

publication_date

Publication date.

url_px

URL of the dataset in the PXWeb API.

Returns NULL if there is no internet connection.

See Also

bfs_get_data(), bfs_get_catalog_tables()

Examples

bfs_get_catalog_data(language = "en", extended_search = "student")

# by theme ("Education and science")
bfs_get_catalog_data(language = "en", prodima = 900212)

BFS documentation built on Oct. 21, 2026, 1:07 a.m.