Data Background

The Data Story pages will illustrate how the data was gathered, handled, and delivered to generate the content of this site

Resources

This website was created with Python using data from TheCatAPI. The following Python packages (not all dependencies listed) and resources were used:

Acknowledgements

In addition to the documentation pages linked above, various guides, tutorials, and StackOverflow questions / answers helped me along the journey of making the website. The following list is not exhaustive:

Data Fetch

TheCatAPI was queried and returned data as a JSON. When read into Python, it resulted in a list of dictionaries. Pandas converted the result into a DataFrame, which can be conveniently represented as a table.


	import requests as re
	import pandas as pd
	cat = pd.DataFrame(re.get("https://api.thecatapi.com/v1/breeds").json())

Initial Data Table

A sample of the resulting table, cat, is presented below. Notice the various data types in the columns: dictionaries, strings, floats, and integers. Long strings are cut down for viewing purposes.

	weight	id	name	cfa_url	vetstreet_url	vcahospitals_url	temperament	origin	country_codes	country_code	description	life_span	indoor	lap	alt_names	adaptability	affection_level	child_friendly	dog_friendly	energy_level	grooming	health_issues	intelligence	shedding_level	social_needs	stranger_friendly	vocalisation	experimental	hairless	natural	rare	rex	suppressed_tail	short_legs	wikipedia_url	hypoallergenic	reference_image_id	image	cat_friendly	bidability
0	{\'imperial\': \'7 - 10\', \'metric\': \'3 - 5\'}	abys	Abyssinian	http://c...	http://w...	https://...	Active, ...	Egypt	EG	EG	The Abys...	14 - 15	0	1.0		5	5	3	4	5	1	2	5	2	5	5	1	0	0	1	0	0	0	0	https://...	0	0XYvRd7oD	{\'id\': \'0XYvRd7oD\', \'width\': 1204, \'height\': 1445, \'url\': \'https://cdn2.thecatapi.com/images/0XYvRd7oD.jpg\'}	NaN	NaN
1	{\'imperial\': \'7 - 10\', \'metric\': \'3 - 5\'}	aege	Aegean	NaN	http://w...	NaN	Affectio...	Greece	GR	GR	Native t...	9 - 12	0	NaN		5	4	4	4	3	3	1	3	3	4	4	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	https://...	0	ozEvzdVM-	{\'id\': \'ozEvzdVM-\', \'width\': 1200, \'height\': 800, \'url\': \'https://cdn2.thecatapi.com/images/ozEvzdVM-.jpg\'}	NaN	NaN

Continue to the next page to see how the data was processed. Compare the table above to the data table after processing.