I went to download some records and the download had many more records than I’d filtered to. Figured out that the places filter in the url was not translating. So https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=21,23&subview=map&taxon_id=3751 (filtering a species to FL and GA) gives this in the query quality_grade=any&identifications=any&taxon_id=3751&verifiable=true&spam=false with a spinning thing near Place below that that lasts forever and I get ca. 20,000 more records in the download compared to filtered observations. I tried manually pasting in the url as the instructions say, but then the query changes to place_id=21%2C23&subview=map&taxon_id=3751 and I get zero results. I’m guessing I’m just missing something and if someone could tell me what it is, I’d really appreciate it.
the export page is relatively old. is it even designed to work with multiple places? if not, maybe you can set a collection project that includes multiple places, and see if filtering by a single project instead of multiple places can get you want you need.
besides the CSV export, there are other ways to download the data from a set of observations. not sure what kind of data you need exactly, but i’m sure there’s more than one way to get it.
Thank you. Apparently it’s not made to work with multiple places. This is another example of a “not bug” that does not work as I’d expect as far as having observations filtered exactly how I need them and then clicking on “download”, which I would expect to download only the filtered-to results and that not being the case. Your suggestion for a collection project based on multiple places is a good one, although that would entail entering hundreds of species one by one since I can’t base a collections project on a list that I can batch add to but we may have to do that anyway. Another similar issue is “without_taxon” apparently not doing multiples either. I’m going to have to rethink how to do what I need to do, as I’d thought that the difficult part would be getting the url tweaked properly.
remember that there are many ways to get data from the system besides the CSV download. just as an example, you could try using the tool in @kildor’s site that downloads observations: https://kildor.name/inat/download-observations. there are other tools that help with different kinds of data extraction. the best one just depends on what you need and what kinds of skills you have or are willing to develop.
Do you know of a forum post or somewhere that lists the many ways? I redid how I was trying to get the records through the iNat export tool but had the export actually fail, which I’d not seen before, even though everything seemed hunky dory before that as far as number of observations being the same as my url produced, not over 200K, or anything fishy. I suspect that the sticking point is basing it off of a list, which shows up in the export query but would not be a way to limit by manually on the export page. It looks like I could put in comma multiple, comma delimited, taxon IDs, but I have no way to get the taxon IDs all at once. And thanks again.
there’s probably nothing specifically for tools to download observations, but there have been a few attempts – though none very exhaustive – to catalog things that people have made to work with iNat data:
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/external-code-tools-etc-for-working-with-inat-wiki/15906
- https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/3rd-party-inaturalist-tools/25971
the more specific you can be about what data you’re trying to get and what tools / skills you have, the better suggestions i might be able to provide.
Thanks again. What I’d wanted to do was get observations for spp based on a list and multiple places with other parameters such as research grade, photos, etc. I could come up with a url for that, but could not export using the tool. I figured out a workaround, but iNaturalist should change the instructions/wording related to export if they cannot change the functionality as it states that I should be able to paste in a url.
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