Fredapi error using get_series method from fredapi package

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1

Hello, fredapi package is succesfully installed in my environment. Importing fredapi and creating the fred object using my api key works. However, when actual pulling data using get_series I get an error. I don’t get this error using other platforms (like datacamp notebook).

import fredapi as Fred
fred=Fred(api_key='some number')
sp500=fred.get_series('SP500') #pull sp500 prices

this is the error I get

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
AttributeError                            Traceback (most recent call last)
~\AppData\Local\Temp\ipykernel_12768\3735180914.py in <module>
      1 fred = Fred(api_key='48687714d90448d876bb115d06578128')
----> 2 fred.get_series('SP500')

~\anaconda3\envs\my_models\lib\site-packages\fredapi\fred.py in get_series(self, series_id, observation_start, observation_end, **kwargs)
    133             raise ValueError('No data exists for series id: ' + series_id)
    134         data = {}
--> 135         for child in root.getchildren():
    136             val = child.get('value')
    137             if val == self.nan_char:

AttributeError: 'xml.etree.ElementTree.Element' object has no attribute 'getchildren'

Any idea what is causing this? Thank you.

2

It appears that Fred is using an old API for elementree. The getchildren method was deprecated in Python 3.2 and removed in Python 3.9: xml.etree.ElementTree — The ElementTree XML API — Python 3.8.16 documentation

3

Thank you Glen!

So what does this mean exactly? I should use and older version of Python in my local environment if I want to use Fred on my local machine?

But my online notebook on Datacamp can use the Fred package without problems. I presume this online notebook uses the latest Python version. Yet it works.

Thanks again. Appreciate you helping me out.

4

You need to use a version of Python that is 3.9 or older wherever you want to use Fred.

As to your Datacamp: Did you check or are you just guesssing?

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