I want to retrieve consumerfinance.gov complaintdatabase data using the Socrata API.
This is straightforward to retrieve the data using the instructions on the site at http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaintdatabase/technical-documentation/#api-documentation
I used the following query with '6yuf-367p' to get just 'prepaid card' product data and the '.json' tag to get it in JSON format:
http://data.consumerfinance.gov/api/views/6yuf-367p/rows.json
I used PHP to retrieve data with this query:
$url = "http://data.consumerfinance.gov/api/views/6yuf-367p/rows.json";
$json = file_get_contents($url);
$data = json_decode($json);
var_dump($data);
The results are paraphrased below. A couple of things about the results that are different than what I was expecting.
I wasn't expecting the 'Meta' section. The column names are in the Meta section not associated directly with the data in { key: value } format.
I was expecting the Data section to have { key: value } format instead of just 'values'. This is different than the format described on Socrata help page at http://dev.socrata.com/docs/formats/json.html
I am not advanced javascript developer so I am wondering how best to proceed. Ideally I want only the 'Data' section with column names in the { key: value } format. I wanted it in that { key: value } format to use with things like Google Charts.
I am imaging I would have to save the column names in array and then loop through each data row and rewrite the data rows with column names included to get { key: value } format.
My other option would be to use the csv API format which is super clean with nice clean columns and no Meta section. But then I would have to convert the csv to JSON which seems unnecessary as the JSON is available.
CSV query is this:
http://data.consumerfinance.gov/api/views/6yuf-367p/rows.csv
So couple of questions:
Does socrata provide an API feed without the 'Meta' section? Is there a filter I can use to exclude the 'Meta' section?
If answer to #1 is no, does Socrata have ready javascript to parse the JSON to get the 'Data' section in { key: value } format similar format as described on Socrata help page?
Thanks!
{
"meta" : {
"view" : {
"id" : "6yuf-367p",
"name" : "Prepaid Card Complaints",
"averageRating" : 0,
"createdAt" : 1434039311,
etc etc
"columns" : [ {
"id" : -1,
"name" : "sid",
"dataTypeName" : "meta_data",
"fieldName" : ":sid",
"position" : 0,
"renderTypeName" : "meta_data",
"format" : {
}
}, {
etc etc
"data" : [ [ 208134, "A7A3941C-A764-44CA-ABC0-66DE814F1969", 208134, 1438091214, "924763", 1438091214, "924763", null, "2015-07-13T00:00:00", "Prepaid card", "General purpose card", "Managing, opening, or closing account", null, null, null, "Amex", "WA", "982XX", "Web", "2015-07-19T00:00:00", "Closed with monetary relief", "Yes", null, "1464043" ]
......
]
}