"Received fatal alert: handshake_failure" when downloading Census (QWI) data.

[Marshall Steinbaum]

I'm trying to download a series of .csv files from the Census LEHD website (a certain configuration of the Quarterly Workforce Indicators data, one file for each state). When I use the "copy" command, I receive the error "Received fatal alert: handshake_failure".

This is not using the Census API. Is that necessary?

[William Lisowski]

Welcome to Statalist.

In theory what you did should work. You should tell us, though, what version of Stata you are using, since the oldest versions had some difficulties with https connections, and that may be what you are experiencing.

It is a shame you posted your example as a screen shot. I'd be glad to try it from my system, but the chances of my being able to accurately retype the jumble of characters in your URL are negligible.

Please take a few moments to review the Statalist FAQ linked to from the top of the page, as well as from the Advice on Posting link on the page you used to create your post. Note especially sections 9-12 on how to best pose your question. It's particularly helpful to copy commands and output from your Stata Results window and paste them into your Statalist post using code delimiters [CODE] and [/CODE], and it is expected that you specify what version of Stata you are using if it is not the latest release.

[Marshall Steinbaum]

Thank you. This is using Stata 15. Here's the code

copy "https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/qwi/latest_release/al/qwi_al_se_f_gc_n4_oslp_u.csv.gz" test_sample

[William Lisowski]

Painfully slowly for 405MB, but the command worked correctly for me.

If the output of the about command tells you that the version of Stata you are running is not Stata 15.1 from 18 April 2018 or later, you should update your copy of Stata to the final version of Stata 15.1 - start with

update

and click the appropriate links. (You need admin rights on your computer.)

That should resolve the problem.

The details are discussed painfully at the link below, in post #11, for anyone who might later read this post and want the details.

https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...79#post1531679

[Marshall Steinbaum]

Aha. Thank you.