census2dbf

Converts .csv files downloaded from the Census Factfinder into the legacy DBF format, which is useful for GIS applications. Census2dbf is a standalone command line tool with no requirements.

Install

pip install census2dbf

Usage

On the shell:

$ census2dbf path/to/census.csv --output=/path/of/saved.dbf
path/of/saved.dbf

The --output argument is optional. If it's omitted, a file with the same name but a .dbf extension will be saved in the same folder. E.g. census-file.csv will be converted to a new file named census-file.dbf

Options

--dd: Data dictionary

Use the --dd option to generate a data dictionary from the headers of the census file. The data dictionary will be saved to the same folder as the output dbf, with a similar name.

Although Census data files usually come with a data dictionary, census2dbf will sometimes rewrite fieldnames to avoid duplicates. The data dictionary will match the

$ census2dbf --dd tests/data/ACS_13_5YR_S0802_with_ann.csv
tests/data/ACS_13_5YR_S0802_with_ann.dbf
tests/data/ACS_13_5YR_S0802_with_ann-data-dictionary.txt
$ head tests/data/ACS_13_5YR_S0802_with_ann-data-dictionary.txt
Data Dictionary
Automatically extracted from the header of tests/data/ACS_13_5YR_S0802_with_ann.csv
2015-03-18 15:09
GEO.id	Id
...

--include-cols: Filter out columns

Pass the --include-cols or -i option a comma-delimited list of column names to output only those columns. This option is case-insensitive.

$ census2dbf --include-cols geo.id,GEO.id,GEO.id2,HD02_S21 path/to/census.csv