Retrieving Places Contained Within Another Place

The =DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType) formula returns lists of child places from a list of parent Place DCIDs. It only returns children with a place type that matches the placeType parameter, such as State, Country, and so on.

Note: Be sure to follow the instructions for Installing and Enabling the Sheets Add-On before using this formula.

Formula

=DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType)

Required Arguments

• dcids: A list of parent Place nodes, identified by their DCIDs.
• placeType: The type of the contained child Place nodes to filter by. For example,City and Countyare contained within State. For a full list of available types, see the Data Commons graph browser entry for Place.

Returns

Lists of child places from a list of parent Place DCIDs. Returns a list of child places of the specified place DCIDs, of the specified place type.

Note: It’s best to minimize the number of function calls to =DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType) by using a single call to get the names for a column of nodes. This is because a spreadsheet will make one call to a Google server per custom function call. If your sheet contains many separate calls to =DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType) you can expect it to be slow and return with errors.

Examples

This section contains examples of using the =DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType) formula.

Example 1: Retrieve a List of Counties in Delaware

To retrieve a list of counties in Delaware, perform the following steps:

1. Place your cursor in the cell where you want to add the DCID for Delaware. In this case, cell A2.
2. Enter the Delaware DCID of geoId/10.
3. (Optional) In cell B2, enter DCGETNAME(A2) to retrieve Delaware’s name from the DCID in cell A2.
4. Move to the cell C3 and enter the formula =DCPLACESIN(A2, "County") to retrieve the county names. The DCIDs for the three Delaware counties populate column C.
5. Retrieve the Delaware county names by entering the formula =DCGETNAME(C2:C4) into cell D2.

Example 2: Retrieve Congressional Districts in Alaska and Hawaii

To retrieve the congressional districts in Alaska and Hawaii, perform the following steps:

1. In cell A2, enter geoId/02 for the DCID of Alaska and in Cell A3, enter geoId/15 for the DCID of Hawaii.
2. (Optional) Enter =DCGETNAME(A2:A3) in cell B1 to retrieve the names of Alaska and Hawaii into column B.
3. Retrieve the DCIDs for the congressional districts by enter =DCPLACESIN(A2:A3, "CongressionalDistrict") into cell C2.
4. Finally, retrieve the names of the congressional districts by entering =DCGETNAMES(C2:C4) into cell D2.

Error Responses

If a DCID does not exist, the =DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType) formula returns a value of #REF!. For example, the =DCPLACESIN(A1, "CongressionalDistrict") formula should return the congressional districts for the DCID in cell A1. However, because the “geoId/123123123” DCID does not exist, an error of #REF! is returned to cell B1 in the following sheet:

If you provide an empty cell for a DCID, the =DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType) formula returns a value of #ERROR!, as shown show in the following image:

Finally, if you provide an invalid property to the =DCPLACESIN(dcids, placeType) formula, an error of #REF! is also returned, as follows: