istatapi is a Python interface to discover and retrieve data from ISTAT API (The Italian National Institute of Statistics). The library is designed to explore ISTAT metadata and to retreive data in different formats. istatapi is built on top of ISTAT SDMX RESTful API.

Whether you are an existing organization, a curious individual or an academic researcher, istatapi aims to allow you to easily access ISTAT databases with just a few lines of code. The library implements functions to:

• Explore all available ISTAT datasets (dataflows in SDMX terminology)
• Search available datasets by keywords
• Retrieve information on a specific dataset like: the ID of the dataflow, the names and available values of the dimensions of the dataset, available filters.
• Get data of an available dataset in a pandas DataFrame, csv or json format.

Install

You can easily install the library by using the pip command:

pip install istatapi

Tutorial

First, let’s simply import the modules we need:

from istatapi import discovery, retrieval
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

With istatapi we can search through all the available datasets by simply using the following function:

discovery.all_available()

	df_id	version	df_description	df_structure_id
0	101_1015	1.3	Crops	DCSP_COLTIVAZIONI
1	101_1030	1.0	PDO, PGI and TSG quality products	DCSP_DOPIGP
2	101_1033	1.0	slaughtering	DCSP_MACELLAZIONI
3	101_1039	1.2	Agritourism - municipalities	DCSP_AGRITURISMO_COM
4	101_1077	1.0	PDO, PGI and TSG products: operators - municipalities data	DCSP_DOPIGP_COM

You can also search for a specific dataset (in this example, a dataset on imports), by doing:

discovery.search_dataset("import")

	df_id	version	df_description	df_structure_id
10	101_962	1.0	Livestock import export	DCSP_LIVESTIMPEXP
47	139_176	1.0	Import and export by country and commodity Nace 2007	DCSP_COEIMPEX1
49	143_222	1.0	Import price index - monthly data	DCSC_PREIMPIND

To retrieve data from a specific dataset, we first need to create an instance of the DataSet class. We can use df_id, df_description or df_structure_id from the above DataFrame to tell to the DataSet class what dataset we want to retrieve. Here, we are going to use the df_id value. This may take a few seconds to load.

# initialize the dataset and get its dimensions
ds = discovery.DataSet(dataflow_identifier="139_176")

We now want to see what variables are included in the dataset that we are analysing. With istatapi we can easily print its variables (“dimensions” in ISTAT terminology) and their description.

ds.dimensions_info()

	dimension	dimension_ID	description
0	FREQ	CL_FREQ	Frequency
1	MERCE_ATECO_2007	CL_ATECO_2007_MERCE	Commodity Nace 2007
2	PAESE_PARTNER	CL_ISO	Geopolitics
3	ITTER107	CL_ITTER107	Territory
4	TIPO_DATO	CL_TIPO_DATO12	Data type 12

Now, each dimension can have a few possible values. istatapi provides a quick method to analyze these values and print their English descriptions.

dimension = "TIPO_DATO" #use "dimension" column from above
ds.get_dimension_values(dimension)

	values_ids	values_description
0	EV	export - value (euro)
1	TBV	trade balance - value (euro)
2	ISAV	import - seasonally adjusted value - world based model (millions of euro)
3	ESAV	export - seasonally adjusted value - world based model (millions of euro)
4	TBSAV	trade balance - seasonally adjusted value -world based model (millions of euro)
5	IV	import - value (euro)

If we do not filter any of our variables, the data will just include all the possible values in the dataset. This could result in too much data that would slow our code and make it difficult to analyze. Thus, we need to filter our dataset. To do so, we can simply use the values_ids that we found using the function get_dimension_values in the cell above.

Note: Make sure to pass the names of the dimensions in lower case letters as arguments of the set_filter function. If you want to filter for multiple values, simply pass them as lists.

freq = "M" #monthly frequency
tipo_dato = ["ISAV", "ESAV"] #imports and exports seasonally adjusted data
paese_partner = "WORLD" #trade with all countries

ds.set_filters(freq = freq, tipo_dato = tipo_dato, paese_partner = paese_partner)

Having set our filters, we can now finally retrieve the data by simply passing our DataSet instance to the function get_data. It will return a pandas DataFrame with all the data that we requested. The data will be already sorted by datetime

trade_df = retrieval.get_data(ds)
trade_df.head()

	DATAFLOW	FREQ	MERCE_ATECO_2007	PAESE_PARTNER	ITTER107	TIPO_DATO	TIME_PERIOD	OBS_VALUE	BREAK	CONF_STATUS	OBS_PRE_BREAK	OBS_STATUS	BASE_PER	UNIT_MEAS	UNIT_MULT	METADATA_EN	METADATA_IT
0	IT1:139_176(1.0)	M	10	WORLD	ITTOT	ESAV	1993-01-01	10767	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN
368	IT1:139_176(1.0)	M	10	WORLD	ITTOT	ISAV	1993-01-01	9226	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN
372	IT1:139_176(1.0)	M	10	WORLD	ITTOT	ISAV	1993-02-01	10015	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN
4	IT1:139_176(1.0)	M	10	WORLD	ITTOT	ESAV	1993-02-01	10681	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN
373	IT1:139_176(1.0)	M	10	WORLD	ITTOT	ISAV	1993-03-01	9954	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN

Now that we have our data, we can do whatever we want with it. For example, we can plot the data after having it cleaned up a bit. You are free to make your own analysis!

# set matplotlib themes
plt.style.use('fivethirtyeight')
plt.rcParams['figure.figsize'] = [16, 5]

#fiveThirtyEight palette
colors = ['#30a2da', '#fc4f30', '#e5ae38', '#6d904f', '#8b8b8b']

# calculate moving averages for the plot
trade_df["MA_3"] = trade_df.groupby("TIPO_DATO")["OBS_VALUE"].transform(
    lambda x: x.rolling(window=3).mean()
)

#replace the "TIPO_DATO" column values with more meaningful labels
trade_df["TIPO_DATO"] = trade_df["TIPO_DATO"].replace(
    {"ISAV": "Imports", "ESAV": "Exports"}
)

# Plot the data
after_2013 = trade_df["TIME_PERIOD"] >= "2013"
is_ESAV = trade_df["TIPO_DATO"] == "Exports"
is_ISAV = trade_df["TIPO_DATO"] == "Imports"

exports = trade_df[is_ESAV & after_2013].rename(columns={"OBS_VALUE": "Exports", "MA_3": "Exports - three months moving average"})
imports = trade_df[is_ISAV & after_2013].rename(columns={"OBS_VALUE": "Imports", "MA_3": "Imports - three months moving average"})

plt.plot(
    "TIME_PERIOD",
    "Exports",
    data=exports,
    marker="",
    linestyle="dashed",
    color = colors[0],
    linewidth=1
)
plt.plot(
    "TIME_PERIOD",
    "Imports",
    data=imports,
    marker="",
    linestyle="dashed",
    color = colors[1],
    linewidth=1
)
plt.plot(
    "TIME_PERIOD",
    "Exports - three months moving average",
    data=exports,
    color = colors[0],
    linewidth=2
)
plt.plot(
    "TIME_PERIOD",
    "Imports - three months moving average",
    data=imports,
    marker="",
    color = colors[1],
    linewidth=2
)

# add a title
plt.title("Italy's trade with the world")

# add a label to the x axis
plt.xlabel("Year")

# turn y scale from millions to billions (divide by a 1000), and add a label
plt.ylabel("Value in billions of euros")
plt.gca().yaxis.set_major_formatter(plt.FuncFormatter(lambda x, loc: "{:,}".format(int(x/1000))))
plt.legend()

With just a few lines of code, we have been able to retrieve data from ISTAT and make a simple plot. This is just a simple example of what you can do with istatapi. You can find more examples in the _examples folder. Enjoy!