EIA Nuclear Powerplant data scraper

eia_nuke_scraper.py

## Script to scrape all nuclear powerplant data from the EIA database
## and create a CSV

## Also requires an EIA API key, which you can register for here http://www.eia.gov/beta/api/register.cfm

## John J Czaplewski | jczaplew@gmail.com | May, 2013


import urllib2
import json
import csv

#Create a CSV file and writer
csvWriter = csv.writer(open('results.csv', 'wb+'))
csvWriter.writerow(['name', 'fuel', 'generator', 'series_id', 'lat', 'lon', 'source', 'data_2012', 'data_2011', 'data_2010', 'data_2009', 'data_2008', 'data_2007', 'data_2006', 'data_2005', 'data_2004', 'data_2003', 'data_2002', 'data_2001'])

#First query finds the IDs of all the available powerplants
request1 = urllib2.urlopen('http://api.eia.gov/category/?api_key=BA406DCCD54844844DC10C573C176695&category_id=1018')

powerplants = json.load(request1)

#Now we loop through the results and package all of the IDs into a list for use later
powerplantIds = []
i = 0
while (i < len(powerplants["category"]["childcategories"])):
    powerplantIds.append(powerplants["category"]["childcategories"][i]["category_id"])
    i+=1

# Start looping through the list of powerplants that was just created...
j = 0
while (j < len(powerplantIds)):
    #Start navigating down the JSON...for each powerplant, find all available categories of data
    request2 = urllib2.urlopen('http://api.eia.gov/category/?api_key=BA406DCCD54844844DC10C573C176695&category_id=' + str(powerplantIds[j]))
    powerplantNetGen = json.load(request2)
    x = 0
    #Loop through all available categories for each powerplant, and grab only the ones that are annual data for a specific type of fuel source
    keepers = []
    while (x < len(powerplantNetGen["category"]["childseries"])):
        name = powerplantNetGen["category"]["childseries"][x]["name"]
        name = name.split(" : ")
        if name[2] == "Nuclear" and powerplantNetGen["category"]["childseries"][x]["f"] == "A" :
            keepers.append(powerplantNetGen["category"]["childseries"][x]["series_id"])
        x += 1

    #Now that we know all the fuel types for a powerplant, we're going to request that type's most specific data
    y = 0
    while (y < len(keepers)) :
        request3 = urllib2.urlopen('http://api.eia.gov/series/?series_id=' + keepers[y] + '&api_key=BA406DCCD54844844DC10C573C176695')
        stationData = json.load(request3)
        name = stationData["series"][0]["name"]
        nameSanitized = name.replace("'", "")
        nameSanitized = nameSanitized.split(" : ")

        #We have the data, just have to clean it up before inserting into the database
        years = ["2012", "2011", "2010", "2009", "2008", "2007", "2006", "2005", "2004", "2003", "2002", "2001"]
        yearData = []

        z = 0
        while z < len(years):
            try:
                if stationData["series"][0]["data"][z][0] == years[z] :
                    yearData.append(stationData["series"][0]["data"][z][1])
                else :
                    yearData.append("0")
            except IndexError:
                yearData.append("0")
            z += 1

        # Finally write a new row to the CSV
        csvWriter.writerow([nameSanitized[1], nameSanitized[2], nameSanitized[3], stationData["series"][0]["series_id"], stationData["series"][0]["lat"], stationData["series"][0]["lon"], stationData["series"][0]["source"], yearData[0], yearData[1], yearData[2], yearData[3], yearData[4], yearData[5], yearData[6], yearData[7], yearData[8], yearData[9], yearData[10], yearData[11]])
        print "Inserted a row"
        y += 1

    #Now do it again, and again
    print "Done with " + str(j) + " of " + str(len(powerplantIds))
    j += 1

print "Finished!"