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Andersen1's avatar
Andersen1
Frequent Visitor
5 years ago

How to consume Stats Canada API

Hi Friends,

 

Im trying to consume data from Stats Canada API and I have read through their WDS documentation but everything I try I run into errors. Im just wondering if anyone in the community has successfully leveraged their API?

 

Thanks 

Need Help

2 Replies

  • mahoneypat's avatar
    mahoneypat
    Microsoft Employee
    5 years ago

    It looks like a standard API.  Which method/query are your requesting?  If you are trying the get the one to get the CSV download, but it is zipped and unzipping files is tricky (unless it is gzip or one of the compression types Power BI handles easily).  This post has a method to do it, if you are comfortable with M queries.

    http://sql10.blogspot.com/2016/06/reading-zip-files-in-powerquery-m.html

     

    If not, you should be able to download the zip file, decompress it, and then use Power BI to load the csv file data.

    Regards,

    Pat

     

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    4 years ago

    Hi, I am wondering if it is possible to use the "Get" functions to only retrieve specific time series (vectors).  I have been able to pull full tables in, as you mention above, and I have been able to get "Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/wds/rest/getAllCubesList"))" to pull in cube information, but I cannot get queries for specific vectors or productIDs to work.  Is it possible to do using Power Query?

     

    Thanks for any help!!

     

    Update:

    My apologies, I did get this to work:

    Source =
    Json.Document(
    Web.Contents("https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/wds/rest/getDataFromVectorByReferencePeriodRange?vectorIds=""""1"""",""""2""""&startRefPeriod=2016-01-01&endReferencePeriod=2017-01-01")
    )

    as an example.  Thanks all!