Search population by city from the US census API

Question

I'm interested in know the population by city, but I'm not finding that option on the API.

Then, what I'm considering is to use the zipcodes to do make the mapping, that information seems to be available from the API:

https://api.census.gov/data/2015/acs5?get=NAME,B01001_001E&for=zip+code+tabulation+area:*

This is a sample of the table:

+-------+-------+-------+
| 00601 | 17982 | 00601 |
+-------+-------+-------+
| 00602 | 40260 | 00602 |
+-------+-------+-------+
| 00603 | 52408 | 00603 |
+-------+-------+-------+
| 00606 | 6331 | 00606 |
+-------+-------+-------+
| 00610 | 28328 | 00610 |
+-------+-------+-------+
| 00612 | 64816 | 00612 |
+-------+-------+-------+

As I understand: First column is the zip code. Second column is population. Third column is zip code tabulation area (ZCTA).

Now, this data is suppoused to not be available on the by zip code, but only by ZCTA, is indicated here.

This is because ZCTA represents actual areas where the population can be calculated while regular zip codes represent a collection of mailing addresses that not necessarily form a polygon.

My question then is, is it reliable to use the above table t estimate the population by city summing up the values for all the zip codes in the same city?

Answer 1

You could try to accept my comment as an answer (I don't think that's how it's done). But I would think some useful documentation would serve you more than a quick link edit.

Here is a link to their API guide. Also, a list of their available survey/data sources and how to build the API links for them. I haven't gone through them extensively, but it looks like a lot of it is there.