RubyPx

Work with PC-Axis files using Ruby.

Motivation

The Spanish Statistics Institute (INE) favourite format to publish the data is PC-Axis, a semi-plain-text format which is kind of difficult to work with unless you have a PC with Windows installed in.

There is a library in R called pxR from @gilbellosta, but I don't know more alternatives in other programming languages.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'ruby_px'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install ruby_px

Usage

# Load a dataset
dataset = RubyPx::Dataset.new 'spec/fixtures/ine-padron-2014.px'

# Query some metadata
dataset.title
=> "Población por sexo, municipios y edad (año a año)."

dataset.units
=> "personas"

dataset.source
=> "Instituto Nacional de Estadística"

dataset.contact
=> "INE E-mail:www.ine.es/infoine. Internet: www.ine.es. Tel: +34 91 583 91 00 Fax: +34 91 583 91 58"

dataset.last_updated
=> "05/10/99" # Really, INE?

dataset.creation_date
=> "20141201"

# Obtain the headings and the stubs
dataset.headings
=> ["edad (año a año)"]

dataset.stubs
=> ["sexo", "municipios"]

# Obtain the dimensions of the dataset
dataset.dimensions
=> ["sexo", "edad (año a año)", "municipios"]

# Get the list of values of a dimension
dataset.dimension('sexo')
=> ["Ambos sexos", "Hombres", "Mujeres"]

# Query the data using the method #data
# You can query the data in two ways:
# 1 - providing all the dimensions, so you'll obtain a single value
dataset.data('edad (año a año)' => 'Total', 'sexo' => 'Ambos sexos', 'municipios' => '28079-Madrid')
=> "3165235"

# 2 - providing all the dimensions except one, so you'll obtain an array
dataset.data('edad (año a año)' => 'Total', 'sexo' => 'Ambos sexos')
=> [....] # an array with the population of all places for all ages and both sexs

TODO

Refactor
Test the gem with more files
Speed-up the parsing time

Development

After checking out the repository, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/PopulateTools/ruby_px. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

Thanks

Thank you Xavier Badosa for inspiring me with json-stat.org and the API of the Javascript library json-stat.com.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.