Using the API in SAS

I hadn't seen any examples of SAS code using the Census API yet, so I wanted to share my piece of code. This code only works with SAS9.4M4 or higher.

The example code underneath creates a table with the number of veterans for all tracts in New York State.

--- SAS Code ---

filename resp temp;
%let myCensusKey = [CensusAPIKey]; /*use your API key here*/

%macro CensusAPIresponseHeaders(responseFile, outTable);

/*puts the results from a responsefile into a table and uses the first row from the response to create variable names */

libname temp JSON fileref=&responseFile;

data _null_;
  set temp.root (obs=1);
  array elemCols{*} element:;
  length rename $4000;
  do i=1 to dim(elemCols);
    rename=catx(' ',rename, catx('=','element'||compress(put(i,3.)),elemCols{i}));
  end;
  call symputx('rename',rename);
run;

data &outTable;
  set temp.root (firstobs=2);
  rename &rename;
run;

libname temp clear;
%mend;

proc http
  url="api.census.gov/.../acs5
  method= "GET"
  out=resp;
run;

%CensusAPIresponseHeaders(resp,ny_vets);