Census FTP interface

Bernie over 5 years ago

Hi. Is there a way to access Census data files (such as TIGER files) through an actual FTP interface? I'm trying to download all the files on this page (https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2015/TRACT/), however, it not being an actual FTP interface, it requires manual clicking on each file to download. I know there used to be such an interface, but I can't find it.

Thanks,

Bernie

Glenn Rice over 5 years ago

I can't speak to the (non)existence of an FTP interface, but I have used several different tools for automating the tedious manual-clicking process. For Chrome, I use the Simple Mass Downloader extension. For Firefox, I've used DownThemAll extension. With either of these, you can use wildcards or regexp to download (say) all the zip files linked on a page.
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jalbertbowdenii over 5 years ago in reply to Glenn Rice

AFAIK ftp has been deprecated by the team; something along the lines of it being insecure, and "no one uses it".
I'm not aware of any real ftp implementation, but do know the faux one referred to here.
I'm incredibly excited to hear about DownloadThemAll being available in Firefox once again! When Firefox switched how their plug-ins/ecosystem worked, DTA stopped working and looked like it might not be coming back.
This encouraged me to learn more about WGET and cURL, which are far more powerful, and dead simple stupid, once you get the hang of them.
That said, now that I know DTA is back up, time to be lazy again!
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JamiRae over 5 years ago

have you tried connecting to it with your FTP software to here:
ftp://ftp.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2015/TRACT/

Joe Germuska over 5 years ago

FWIW, you can convert the above to an FTP URL by changing 'https://www2' to 'ftp://ftp2', as in

ftp2.census.gov/.../
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Glenn Rice over 5 years ago in reply to Glenn Rice

...and then watch as your downloads status bar goes nuts.
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Bernie over 5 years ago in reply to Joe Germuska

Ah! The ftp://ftp trick worked! But I'll have to try DTA as well, that looks to be useful in all kinds of ways. Thanks everyone!
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Glenn Rice over 5 years ago in reply to jalbertbowdenii

yeah, I was sorely dismayed when DTA stopped working. I actually just learned of the new version while looking it up for my reply to Bernie !
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