Retrieve places contained within other places

General information about this endpoint

Signature:

datacommons.get_places_in(dcids, place_type)

Required arguments:

• dcids: A list of nodes to query, identified by their DCID.
• place_type: The type of the contained child Places within the given DCIDs to filter by.

Assembling the information you will need for a call to the get_places_in 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.

• place_type: This argument specifies the type of place sought in the response. For example, when examining places contained within American States, you would be able to select City or County (among others). For a full list of available types, see the place types page.

What to expect in the function return

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

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

Example requests and responses

Example 1: Retrieve a list of all counties in Delaware.

Method call

datacommons.get_places_in(["geoId/10"], "County")

Response

{'geoId/10': ['geoId/10001', 'geoId/10003', 'geoId/10005']}

Example 2: Retrieve a list of congressional districts in Alaska and Hawaii.

datacommons.get_places_in(["geoId/15","geoId/02"], "CongressionalDistrict")

Response

{'geoId/15': ['geoId/1501', 'geoId/1502'], 'geoId/02': ['geoId/0200']}

Error Returns

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

>>> datacommons.get_places_in(["geoId/1021"], "CongressionalDistrict")
{'geoId/1021': []}

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

>>> datacommons.get_places_in(["geoId/1021"])
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: get_places_in() missing 1 required positional argument: 'place_type'

Page last updated: July 10, 2025 • Send feedback about this page