Structure

Region Levels and Areas

Microburbs stores data at various area levels, including Sals (Suburbs and Localities) and lgas (local government areas). The region-level endpoint can get the names of all region levels we keep data on and the area’s endpoint can then be used to find either:

• What areas are a part of a passed-in area
• What area a passed-in area is a part of.

In some cases, an area name may be shared across multiple region levels (Melbourne the Sal and Melbourne the lga).
Sals are the region levels with the most data available.
We store data on 11 different region levels:

• sa1: The smallest level at which we store data, the population of these regions are between 200-800
• sa2: Areas built up of multiple sa1s with an average population of 10,000
• sa3: Areas built up of multiple sa2s, with populations between 30,000 and 130,000
• sa4: Areas built up of multiple sa3s, with populations over 100,000
• gccsa (Greater Capital City Statistical Areas): Made up of sa4s, either built around a state’s capital city (e.g. Greater Sydney) or made up of other areas outside that greater area (Rest of NSW)
• lga (Local Government area): The areas bounded for local government.
• sal (suburb and locality): The suburbs of Australia (e.g. Bondi, South Yarra)
• state: Australian states and territories.
• ced (Commonwealth Electoral Divisions): Approximations of Australian Electoral Commission electoral division boundaries
• sed (State Electoral Divisions): Approximation of State Electoral Districts
• poa: Postal code

For more information on Australian region levels see the following links:

• ABS region levels
• non-ABS region levels

Topics, Sections and Fields

Microburbs data is categorised as follows:

1. Every individual figure, such as the number of university graduates in Sydney, is of a specific field, in this case, it is the census_university_graduates field.
2. Every field is a part of a section which includes multiple fields that all relate together. census_university_graduates and census_it_degree_holders are a part of the “Education” section.
3. Every section is a part of a topic, which is a broader categorisation. The “Education” section is a part of the “Affluence” Topic
   The topics, sections and field endpoints can be used to get the names of these categorisations. The usual process for gathering these names would be first to check all the topic names, then check the names of sections with a topic of interest and then check the ids of fields within a section of your choosing.
   Importantly a field is unique to a specific region level, meaning for example the median_sale_price_house_all_bedrooms figures are available for areas of region level sal but not for areas of region level lga. Moreover, when querying for figures after getting fields it is important to query by a field’s id rather than its name

Figures

Once the names of fields and areas have been found one can query for figures from the database. There are different endpoints available depending on a field’s premium level. It is important to note a field’s premium level when making a query, an endpoint will only return data if the field passed has the same premium level as the endpoint being used. To avoid being overcharged do not use higher premium level endpoints to query fields of lower premium levels.
Each premium level has two standard endpoints:

• The Figure Latest endpoint which only returns the latest value of a figure
• The Figure All endpoint which returns not only the latest value but also other previous values of a figure.
  Both of these endpoints require an area’s name and field id to be passed in as query parameters.
  In addition to those endpoints, premium plan holders gain access to an endpoint that allows one to get multiple figures at once. This endpoint must have a section, area name and region level passed in. It only returns the latest value of figures in that section and only figures of premium level 1.