This program can be used to scrape most recent ACS 5-Year Data at the block group level. It intends to scrape different tables and export as separate .csv files. It also combines tables scraped and transforms for better use.

Variables are divided into two types: grouped variables and selected variables.

• Grouped variables: refer to the whole group, like B01003
• Selected variables: refer to a string of detailed columns like B01001_001E,B01001_002E,B01001_026E. Record them in separate dictionaries

Since the census API only supports acquiring data of all block-groups for one county at one time, need to acquire the county list of the specified state and combine data for each county.

Functions defined and used:

• get_group_data(state, var), get_select_data(state, var): Gets data related to one group variable/one slected variables string, for all block-groups in a specified state.
• update_cols(df, var), update_select_cols(df, var): Decodes column names with actual meaning.
• transform_group_data(state, var), transform_select_data(state, var): Downloads data and tranforms it.

Define functions save_group_data(state, var) and save_select_data(state, var) to export each data set separately.