Any SDMX Service Endpoint for Statistics Canada?

[Monduiz]

Hello,

I am working on automating the processing of official statistics in a range of applications and workflows using Statistics Canada's sources. The Canadian Agency is providing its tables from Census, National household survey and other surveys, the CANSIM database as well in the sdmx-ml format.

If I can help to add the agency as a provider by default, I would love to, otherwise, this is a request to add those sources as a provider for the sdmx package.

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[eblondel]

Hi, do you know if Statistics Canada provides a SDMX web-service API implentation ? if yes could you share the link? thanks

[Monduiz]

I am not sure if there is an API. My guess is no but I will ask.

The Census datasets are accessible through links like this one with the tables identified with a PID:
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/datasets/OpenDataDownload.cfm?PID=102009"

Even though they seemed to be catalogued with an id, it is not comprehensive. The link above refers to catalogue: 98-311-XCB2011022.

The CANSIM tables can be accessed through links like this one with the table number, in this case, CANSIM 2820003:
http://www20.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/cansim/sdmx/02820003.zip

I will try to get more information.

[Monduiz]

So, there is a Web API that will launch. I will get more details soon. What would you need to make the service provider?

[eblondel]

When it is launched publicly, paste the URL of the web API here, better if there is some web documentation of the API. And then i can have a look to it and see feasibility to add it as embedded service endpoint!

[eblondel]

Hello @Monduiz any news about this new SDMX web API?

[Monduiz]

I will try to get an update this week and post back.

[eblondel]

@Monduiz did you get any update regarding an eventual SDMX web API for Statistics Canada?

[eblondel]

@Monduiz any reference on the web mentioning an SDMX API for Canada statistics?

[Monduiz]

I am going to do a follow-up this week.

[eblondel]

@Monduiz are you aware of any service for this? I've been searching a bit, no way to find a SDMX web-service for Statistics Canada.. is there something in beta stage?

[Monduiz]

@eblondel Hi! I apologize for the lack of updates. I had surgery and was stuck in bed for a few months. I want to catch up with this. Here is what I suggest, I will investigate with StatCan and start working on a way to make this happen. I am working on an analytics program proposal for my department in the Government of Canada and if we want to automate some functions, we need that form of access to the data from the agency. I will report back. Sorry again for the delay!

[eblondel]

No problem, hope you are recovering well. In case you need professionnal service support related to SDMX and rsdmx, let me know. http://eblondel.github.io/#/contact Best regards

[Monduiz]

Ok, so StatsCan has been working on implementing web service APIs, this one is for the Census profile.

Census profile

More info for developers on this page:

developers

We are still looking into the specifics and what else we can have access to and if more is coming. I will update soon.

[KrishnaTO]

Fairly new to SDMX but I was looking for a similar connector, and based on StatsCan's API function getFullTableDownloadSDMX, I was able to easily get the data, with help from this snippet

In my case, enter the document number to create folder, download files per document num, and switch to the folder.

library(httr)
library(rsdmx)

statscanSDMX <- function(docNum) {
Files<-GET(paste("https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/wds/rest/getFullTableDownloadSDMX", docNum, sep = "/"))
dir.create(paste(getwd(), docNum, sep = "/"))
setwd(docNum)
download.file(content(Files)$object, docNum, method="auto", quiet = FALSE)
unzippedist<-unzip(docNum)
}

file1 <- readSDMX(unzippedist[1], isURL = F)

[eblondel]

Thanks, it seems this is an adhoc web-service and not a standard SDMX web api, however this might be plugged into rsdmx, why not. I will look into it when i have time.

[RichardMN]

Just to note that there are already other R packages tailored to accessing StatsCan data:

• https://github.com/mountainMath/cansim
• https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/CANSIM2R/index.html
• https://github.com/mountainMath/cancensus (Census-specific)

Not to say that it might not be nice to see it among the other providers, but this may not need to be a priority.

[lucasjfriesen]

Thanks for those pointers @RichardMN. Looks like I'm following a few folks down this rabbit hole.

StatsCan has set up as a proper SDMX web service now. https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/developers/sdmx/user-guide

[eblondel]

Thanks @lucasjfriesen for this, it's a good news, I will have a look the above link, and see if I can plug a connector asap.