tidycensus::get_acs() geography options?

Question

What are the possible levels/options for the geography argument in tidycensus::get_acs(geography = ???)?

I've seen it work as follows:

library(tidycensus)
census_api_key("YOUR API KEY GOES HERE")

vt <- get_acs(geography = "county", 
              variables = "B19013_001", 
              state = "VT")

slc_value <- get_acs(geography = "tract", 
                variables = "B25077_001", 
                state = "UT",
                county = "Salt Lake County",
                geometry = TRUE)

states <- get_acs(geography = "state", 
              variables = "B19013_001")

Are all of the census geographic entities available? (https://www2.census.gov/geo/pdfs/reference/geodiagram.pdf)

And if so how can I specify nation or Zipcode? This code doesn't work:

nation <- get_acs(geography = "nation", 
              variables = "B19013_001")

Answer 1

Edit 2018/05/09: I've published documentation that covers the available geographies in tidycensus and how to specify them, which you can read here: https://walkerke.github.io/tidycensus/articles/basic-usage.html#geography-in-tidycensus

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I'm the author of the tidycensus package. Yes, I agree that this needs more documentation and I am currently writing it - stay tuned.

In the meantime, use this page for guidance: https://api.census.gov/data/2016/acs/acs5/geography.html. If you format the geography argument as spelled on this page, standalone geographies will work. Geographies that nest within states and/or counties will also work if the state and/or county arguments are specified correctly.

Geographies that a) are not standalone geographies in the API and b) do not nest within states and/or counties, like metropolitan divisions, are not currently supported. I would consider feature requests at https://github.com/walkerke/tidycensus/issues if there is a specific geography you need. Alternatively, the censusapi package (https://github.com/hrecht/censusapi) allows you to send highly customized queries to the Census API, so you might consider checking out this package.