Downloading Datasets from website

[congvert]

Hi

I am new to and learning SAS programming. I am currently working on a project with sports analytics. I am able to download individual NBA players stats and save them in xls or csv format, then import them into my folders in SAS studio.

But these data set are updated daily on the website, and I don't want to through the process of downloading and importing on a daily basis.

Is there a way to automatically download these datasets, or access them from the website into SAS studio, where I can write code to perform analysis?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[RandyMullis]

Hi, @congvert ! 

If I were you, I would use a program or utility to download the CSV file. You can download the file to your Shared Folder location. Then you can just process them (or import them) using SAS code. 

I would:

a. Download the file to the Shared Folder.

b. Create a Snippett with the code to do the import.

c. Either run this code on-demand or have it run in your Autoexec script if you'd like.

As for how to do the download, there are a number of utilities to do this, or you could use Perl or another utility language to carry it out. You could also use the SAS 'proc http' I believe, but that would not work in a Scheduled Task on the Windows side and you wouldn't have access to create a cron job on the Linux VM. That's what I'd suggest doing it on your Windows (or Mac) host.

Let me know if this doesen't make sense. It sounds interesting!

Randy