nfldb is a relational database bundled with a Python module to quickly and conveniently query and update the database with data from active games. Data is imported from nflgame, which in turn gets its data from a JSON feed on NFL.com's live GameCenter pages. This data includes, but is not limited to, game schedules, scores, rosters and play-by-play data for every preseason, regular season and postseason game dating back to 2009.

It can also be used with nflvid to search for and watch video of plays. Please see the nfldb wiki for more details on how to get that working.

Here is a small teaser that shows how to use nfldb to find the top five passers in the 2012 regular season:

import nfldb

db = nfldb.connect()
q = nfldb.Query(db)

q.game(season_year=2012, season_type='Regular')
for pp in q.sort('passing_yds').limit(5).as_aggregate():
    print pp.player, pp.passing_yds

And the output is:

[andrew@Liger ~] python2 top-five.py 
Drew Brees (NO, QB) 5177
Matthew Stafford (DET, QB) 4965
Tony Romo (DAL, QB) 4903
Tom Brady (NE, QB) 4799
Matt Ryan (ATL, QB) 4719

Documentation and getting help

nfldb has comprehensive API documentation. Tutorials, more examples and a description of the data model can be found on the nfldb wiki.

If you need any help or have found a bug, please open a new issue on nfldb's issue tracker or join us at our IRC channel #nflgame on FreeNode.

Installation and dependencies

nfldb depends on the following Python packages available in PyPI: nflgame, psycopg2, pytz and enum34. nfldb also needs PostgreSQL installed with an available empty database.

I've only tested nfldb with Python 2.7 on a Linux system. In theory, nfldb should be able to work on Windows and Mac systems as long as you can get PostgreSQL running. It is not Python 3 compatible (yet, mostly because of the nflgame dependency).

Please see the installation guide on the nfldb wiki for instructions on how to setup nfldb.

Entity-relationship diagram

Here's a condensed version that excludes play and player statistics:

There is also a full PDF version that includes every column in the database.

The nfldb wiki has a description of the data model.

The most recent version of the nfldb PostgreSQL database is available here: http://burntsushi.net/stuff/nfldb/nfldb.sql.zip.