The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Arms Transfers Database provides a tool to download the data. By default, that output is an .rtf rich-text file — not so easy to analyze with your favorite spreadsheet or statistics software. Luckily, getting a CSV of the data isn't very difficult. Here's how.
To get all transfers for 2014, by seller, run this command in your terminal:
curl http://armstrade.sipri.org/armstrade/html/export_trade_register.php --compressed \
--data 'low_year=2014' \
--data 'high_year=2014' \
--data 'seller_country_code=' \
--data 'buyer_country_code=' \
--data 'armament_category_id=any' \
--data 'buyers_or_sellers=sellers' \
--data 'filetype=csv' \
--data 'include_open_deals=on' \
--data 'sum_deliveries=on' \
--data 'Submit4=Download' \
> sipri-arms-by-seller-2014.csv- To adjust the timespan, change the
low_yearand/orhigh_yearvariables. E.g.,'low_year=2010'. - To get data only for specific countries, add their three-letter codes to the
seller_country_codeand/orbuyer_country_codevariables, with each country code separated by a space. E.g., focus on U.S. and Canadian sales, use'seller_country_code=USA CAN'.
Thanks! Any way to include the "comments" field?