R/ACSdownload-package.R

In ejanalysis/ACSdownload: Obtain American Community Survey Summary File Data Tables from Census Bureau FTP Site (for EJ analysis, etc.)

#' @title Obtain American Community Survey Summary File Data Tables from Census Bureau FTP Site
#' @name ACSdownload
#' @aliases ACSdownload-package
#' @description
#'   THIS PACKAGE MAY BE MOSTLY OBSOLETE NOW THAT SOME CRAN PACKAGES OFFER
#'   MOST OF THESE TOOLS. 
#' @import data.table   
#' @details
#'    
#'   There is a package called totalcensus that tries to 
#'   offer tools to download ACS5yr tables, but the CRAN and dev github versions
#'   have bugs as of 8/2023, and did not work out of the box.
#'     totalcensus [https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/totalcensus/index.html]
#'    see   devtools::install_github("GL-Li/totalcensus")
#'    
#'   ACSdownload is an R package that helps you download and 
#'   parse huge raw data from the
#'   Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year Summary Files,
#'   providing demographic data at the block and tract levels of resolution.
#'   
#'   You can obtain data from the entire USA all at once using this package,
#'     for one or more tables.
#'   
#'   Typically the Census Bureau makes it easy to obtain data from one
#'   state at a time, not every block group in the US. There are roughly 220,000
#'   block groups in the US, and around 74,000 tracts
#'   
#'   Some options for obtaining Census ACS data are listed here: 
#'     [http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data.html]
#'     Other data sources that may be relevant include Census geodatabases 
#'     at [http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-data.html] and data at 
#'     [http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/gazetteer.html] 
#'     For any imported/suggested packages not on CRAN, see [https://ejanalysis.github.io]
#'     
#'   Key function is [get.acs()], and
#'     also see [set.needed()], [nhgis()],
#'   and also see data([lookup.acs2020])
#'   HOWEVER, DATA FORMAT IS CHANGING FOR SUMMARY FILE ACS DATA:
#'   [https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data/summary-file/]
#'   updates-to-acs-summary-file.Overview.html
#'   
#'   Typically the Census Bureau makes it easy to obtain data from one state at a time,
#'   not every block group in the US. There are roughly 220,000 block groups in the US,
#'   and around 74,000 tracts.
#'   The key function in this package is [get.acs()] \cr\cr
#'   For ACS documentation, see [http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs.html] \cr
#'   
#'   Several options for obtaining Census ACS data are now listed here: \cr
#'   
#'   [http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data.html] \cr
#'   Limits on downloads via American Fact Finder, not all US tracts at once
#'     are noted here: [https://ask.census.gov/faq.php?id=5000&faqId=1653] \cr
#'     
#'   Other data sources that may be relevant include Census geodatabases at \cr
#'   [http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-data.html] and data at \cr
#'   [http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/gazetteer.html].
#'   
#'     Also see the help for [get.acs()] \cr\cr
#'     
#' @seealso \pkg{[tidycensus][tidycensus::tidycensus]} to use a key to request ACS
#'   or Decennial Census data, but is slow if you want all blockgroups in a state or nationwide.
#'   \pkg{proxistat} package for block group points as lat lon, or
#'   \pkg{acs} package [http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/acs/index.html]
#'   which lets one obtain more limited amounts of ACS data
#'   but provides better tools for working with the data once obtained.
#' @author info@@ejanalysis.com
#' @references
#'  [http://ejanalysis.github.io] \cr
#'  [http://www.ejanalysis.com] \cr
"_PACKAGE"
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