I was pulling data from the USA dataset using Python and have done so successfully several times. Today the ipums.wait_for_extract command was taking much longer than normal so I attempted to stop it but noticed the results of ipums.retrieve_previous_extracts(‘usa’) showed my latest attempt to extract data listed as status “queued”. Is there an option to stop/remove my extract requests from queue, perhaps a purge command?
Thanks for the question, Ray! The API shares the same extract system as the website, and that system does not currently support user removal of queued extracts. If the extract system is ever extended with that functionality, we would work to make that available via API as well, but for the moment it is not possible.
As the IPUMS USA Extract API is still in beta, we have limited the amount of extract system capacity that API requests can consume as a safeguard. What likely happened here is that other API requests had consumed the available API-enabled capacity, leading to your request being queued for a while. As the beta progresses and confidence grows that the system is stable, we will open more capacity to API requests which will make this situation less common.
Thanks for the feedback!
Thank you fran, that is very helpful to know.