Downloading zip files from US Census FTP site

KAZ — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 17:33:01 GMT

The US Census Bureau makes TIGER/Line shapefiles available via a series of FTP sites. The files are freely available and no account is needed to access the FTP site. I am attempting to write a program that downloads those files.

I presumed a filename ftp statement was the way to go, but am running into problems.

* Copy files from US Census website to the specified directory;
filename _bcin ftp "ftp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/ZCTA5/2010/tl_2010_24_zcta510.zip";
filename _bcout "C:\Temp\tl_2010_24_zcta510.zip" recfm=n;
data _null_;
   length msg $ 384;
   rc=fcopy('_bcin', '_bcout');
   if rc=0 then
      put 'Copied _bcin to _bcout.';
   else do;
      msg=sysmsg();
      put rc= msg=;
   end;
run;

quit;

I received the follwoing error: rc=5660215 msg=ERROR: Open failed for file _BCIN.

What is the proper filenane ftp statement for the remote file?

(alternative question: downloading US Census files must be a common task for mapping appications. Are there any available macros out there that accomplishes this?)

I am running SAS v9.4, TS1M4.

Re: Downloading zip files from US Census FTP site

FriedEgg — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 18:01:41 GMT

filename _bcin ftp 'tl_2010_24_zcta510.zip'
cd='/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/ZCTA5/2010'
host='ftp2.census.gov'
user='anonymous'
passive binary recfm=s;

and, if fcopy doesn't work you can use a very simple data step instead

data _null_;
infile _bcin;
file _bcout;
input;
put _infile_;
run;

topic Downloading zip files from US Census FTP site in SAS Programming

Downloading zip files from US Census FTP site

Re: Downloading zip files from US Census FTP site