Quick start

This guide shows how to fetch data from the OpenAQ API. As an example, we will retrieve location details for the “New Delhi” station in New Delhi, India, with OpenAQ location ID 8118.

This tutorial uses the AWS ClI to make requests and assumes you are familiar with using the command line on your computer. The AWS CLI is not a requirement for using the Open Data on AWS bucket but it does provide easy access to AWS APIs necessary for communicating with the bucket.

1. Install and configure the AWS CLI from https://aws.amazon.com/cli/. Configure the AWS config file, found at $HOME/.aws/confg, with the

   .aws/config

   [default]
   region = us-east-1
   output = json

   Note

   The AWS config file must be configured to the us-east-1 to access the bucket.

2. Test that the AWS CLI is installed an configured by running aws --version in your command prompt. If version details show, aws exists and is configured on your system.

3. Run the following command to copy a single day of data from location 2178 to a local directory named data:

   aws s3 cp \
   --no-sign-request \
   s3://openaq-data-archive/records/csv.gz/locationid=2178/year=2022/month=05/location-2178-20220503.csv.gz \
   data

   Note

   --no-sign-request allows you to make the request without user credentials

4. Now with the data file on your local system, unzip the file to reveal the csv file with the following command.

   tar -xvzf \
   data/records/csv.gz/locationid=2178/year=2022/month=05/location-2178-20220503.csv.gz