Retrieve property values of nodes

Given a list of nodes and a property label, returns values associated with the given property for each node.

General information about this endpoint

Signature:

datacommons.get_property_values(dcids, prop, out=True, value_type=None, limit=datacommons.utils._MAX_LIMIT)

Required arguments:

  • dcids: A list of nodes to query, identified by their Data Commons identifiers.
  • prop: The property to query for.

Optional arguments:

  • value_type: The type of the property value to filter by. Defaults to NONE. Only applicable if the value refers to a node.
  • out: The label’s direction. Defaults to True (only returning response nodes directed towards the requested node). If set to False, will only return response nodes directed away from the request node.
  • limit: (≤ 500) Maximum number of values returned per node. Defaults to datacommons.utils._MAX_LIMIT.

Assembling the information you will need for a call to the get_property_values method

Going into more detail on how to assemble the values for the required arguments:

  • dcids: Data Commons uniquely identifies nodes by assigning them DCIDs, or Data Commons IDs. Your query will need to specify the DCIDs for the nodes of interest. More information about DCIDs is available in the glossary.

  • prop: The property whose value you are interested in, such as “name” for the name of a node, or “typeOf” for the type of a node.

In addition to these required properties, this endpoint also allows for other, optional arguments. Here are helpful arguments in regular use by Data Commons developers:

  • value_type: If the property queried only takes on node values, you can use this argument to filter nodes in the response, ensuring the response only contains nodes with the specified type. For example, if you query the property containedInPlace on the DCID geoId/06085, your response will contain many results that may not be relevant to your question. If you instead specify the value_type as City, your result list will be shorter, narrower, and easier to parse.

  • out: This is a boolean value that refers to the orientation, or direction, of the edge. You can specify this argument as True to indicate that you desire the response to only include nodes with the value of the property equivalent to one or more of the specified DCIDs, or False to only return nodes equivalent to one or more of the values of the properties of the specified DCIDs. (To visualize this, Figure 1 illustrates the directions for the property containedInPlace of the node for Argentina.)

Figure 1. Relationship diagram for the property containedInPlace of the country Argentina. Note the directionality of the property containedInPlace: the API returns both nodes with direction in (Buenos Aires is containedInPlace of Argentina) and nodes with direction out (Argentina is containedInPlace of South America).

What to expect in the function return

The method’s return value will always be a dict in the following form:

{
    "<dcid>": ["string", ...]
    ...
}

Examples

Example 1: Retrieve the common names of the country of Côte d’Ivoire.

Method call

>>> datacommons.get_property_values(['country/CIV'],'name')
{'country/CIV': ["Côte d'Ivoire", 'Ivory Coast']}

Example 2: Retrieve the order to which the plant Austrobaileya scandens belongs.

>>> datacommons.get_property_values(['dc/bsmvthtq89217'],'order')
{'dc/bsmvthtq89217': ['Austrobaileyales']}

Example 3: Retrieve the addresses of Stuyvesant High School in New York and Gunn High School in California.

>>> datacommons.get_property_values(["nces/360007702877","nces/062961004587"],'address')
{'nces/360007702877': ['345 Chambers St, New York, New York'], 'nces/062961004587': ['780 Arastradero Rd., Palo Alto, California']}

Example 4: Retrieve a list of earthquake events in Madagascar.

NOTE: Unlike in the REST API, the Python endpoint returns only one direction. Hence, you must specify out as False to obtain results in Madagascar.

>>> datacommons.get_property_values(dcids=["country/MDG"],prop='affectedPlace',out=False,value_type='EarthquakeEvent')
{'country/MDG': ['earthquake/us200040me', 'earthquake/us60003r15', 'earthquake/usc000evr6', 'earthquake/usp00005zf', 'earthquake/usp00006yt', 'earthquake/usp0000afz', 'earthquake/usp0001fcd', 'earthquake/usp0001ss5', 'earthquake/usp00020ud', 'earthquake/usp0002kfd', 'earthquake/usp0004qn4', 'earthquake/usp0005gu9', 'earthquake/usp0007k9j', 'earthquake/usp0008vc6', 'earthquake/usp000dckw', 'earthquake/usp000fu24', 'earthquake/usp000gmuf', 'earthquake/usp000h6zw', 'earthquake/usp000jgbb']}

Example 5: Retrieve just one cyclone event in India.

>>> datacommons.get_property_values(dcids=["country/IND"],prop='affectedPlace',out=False,value_type='CycloneEvent',limit=1)
{'country/IND': ['cyclone/ibtracs_2018314N12093']}

Example 6: Retrieve the country in which Buenos Aires is located.

Figure 2. Relationship diagram for the property containedInPlace of the country Argentina. Note the directionality of the property containedInPlace: the API returns both nodes with direction in (Buenos Aires is containedInPlace of Argentina) and nodes with direction out (Argentina is containedInPlace of South America).

>>> datacommons.get_property_values(dcids=["country/ARG"],prop='containedInPlace')
{'country/ARG': ['southamerica']}

NOTE: If there is no value associated with the property, an empty list is returned:

   >>> dc.get_property_values(["geoId/06", "geoId/21"], "foo")
   {'geoId/06': [], 'geoId/21': []}

Error Returns

If you do not pass a required positional argument, a TypeError is returned:

>>> dc.get_property_values('address')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: get_property_values() missing 1 required positional argument: 'prop'