API Error on Import

[lazarust]

Is there a reason the API is pinged when importing the library? It seems a little weird and has caused some issues for me when running tests. Thanks!

[ljwolf]

The library fetches the current copy of the metadata upon import, and uses this to structure the API. it's part of the design: we don't want to mirror or maintain duplicates of the main API metadata endpoints.

I suppose, strictly speaking, it doesn't have to be fetched on import, but rather could be pushed down into the first (if any) call to explorer.available() & cached once fetched.

Happy to merge any contribution to do this!

[lazarust]

@ljwolf Could you point me to where that initial API fetch is? I'm having trouble finding it. Thanks 👍🏽

[ronnie-llamado]

@lazarust See line 13 in cenpy/explorer.py:

cenpy/cenpy/explorer.py

Lines 12 to 35 in f767140

	resp = raw_APIs = r.get("https://api.census.gov/data.json")
	try:
	resp.raise_for_status()
	raw_APIs = resp.json()["dataset"]
	APIs = {
	entry["identifier"]
	.split("id")[-1]
	.lstrip("/"): {
	key: value for key, value in diter(entry) if key != entry["identifier"]
	}
	for entry in raw_APIs
	}
	except r.HTTPError:
	raise r.HTTPError(
	"The main Census API Endpoint (https://api.census.gov/data.json) is not available."
	" Try visiting https://api.census.gov/data.json in a web browser to verify connectivity."
	)
	except JSONDecodeError:
	raise JSONDecodeError(
	"The main Census API Endpoint (https://api.census.gov/data.json) returned malformed content."
	" Try visiting https://api.census.gov/data.json in a web browser to verify connectivity."
	)