BLS Unemployment Scraper

bls-unemployment.js

const fetch = require('node-fetch');
const fs = require('fs');
const { PrettyTable } = require('prettytable');

// Sample series IDs and years
const seriesIds = ['CUUR0000SA0', 'SUUR0000SA0'];
const startYear = '2011';
const endYear = '2014';

async function fetchBLSData() {
  const url = 'https://api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v1/timeseries/data/';
  const headers = { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' };
  const body = JSON.stringify({
    seriesid: seriesIds,
    startyear: startYear,
    endyear: endYear,
  });

  try {
    const response = await fetch(url, {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: headers,
      body: body,
    });

    const jsonData = await response.json();
    return jsonData.Results.series;
  } catch (error) {
    console.error('Error fetching data from BLS API:', error);
    return [];
  }
}

function writeToFile(seriesId, table) {
  const output = table.toString();
  fs.writeFileSync(`${seriesId}.txt`, output, 'utf8');
}

function createPrettyTable(series) {
  const table = new PrettyTable({
    fieldNames: ['series id', 'year', 'period', 'value', 'footnotes'],
  });

  series.data.forEach((item) => {
    const { year, period, value, footnotes } = item;
    let footnotesText = '';

    footnotes.forEach((footnote) => {
      if (footnote) {
        footnotesText += footnote.text + ',';
      }
    });

    if ('M01' <= period && period <= 'M12') {
      table.addRow({
        'series id': series.seriesID,
        year,
        period,
        value,
        footnotes: footnotesText.slice(0, -1),
      });
    }
  });

  return table;
}

async function main() {
  const seriesData = await fetchBLSData();

  seriesData.forEach((series) => {
    const table = createPrettyTable(series);
    writeToFile(series.seriesID, table);
  });

  console.log('Files created successfully.');
}

main();