This section is a guide to the various methods of accessing or installing OpenFisca. Follow the guide below to establish what the use case is and get directed to the appropriate section(s).
The most common approach involves a specific country or jurisdiction package and so in this scenario it’s important to identify if that package exists and then continue to step 2 “Clarify use case”. If the goal is contributing to OpenFisca directly (such as this documentation); have a look at the Contribute section of this site and also the OpenFisca Github repositories.
With a specific country or jurisdiction package in mind; ask whether the use case requires contributions to the rules, or intends to just utilise existing rules (for example: run simulations).
If the goal is just to utilise existing rules (rather than contributing to the rules) then consider the following options.
Best for online web applications. The two options are:
If it exists, call an existing web API for your country (no installation necessarily), or
Install a country web API to operate your own web API with no usage limitations (see also Install with Docker).
Suitable for “desktop” processing and running large simulations:
Install a country package in a local environment (see also Install with Docker).
Alternatively, access the Python API in the browser.
If the goal includes contributing to the rules of a country package:
When it already exists, access a country’s source code.
Otherwise, bootstrap a new country package
Finally, some specific edge cases have been described by the OpenFisca community as follows:
Installing a specific country OpenFisca package in an offline environment.
Installing a specific country OpenFisca package on a Windows machine without administrative rights.