Obtain and set your Census API key

tidycensus is an R package designed to return data from the US Census Bureau ready for use within the Tidyverse.

To acquire data from the US Census Bureau using the tidycensus R package, you must first acquire and set a Census API key. After obtaining your key, you can install it for future use with the census_api_key() function in tidycensus.

This exercise uses a fake API key for purposes of illustration.

This is a part of the course

“Analyzing US Census Data in R”

View Course

Exercise instructions

Load the tidycensus package into your DataCamp R session.
Set the Census API key with census_api_key().
Check your API key with Sys.getenv().

Hands-on interactive exercise

Have a go at this exercise by completing this sample code.

# Load the tidycensus package into your R session
library(___)

# Define your Census API key and set it with census_api_key()
api_key <- "rw6pozt48ur2ugc8kg69x5phdrtnuhb2cb1subd6"
census_api_key(___)

# Check your API key
___("CENSUS_API_KEY")

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