script to download Yahoo Finance data

[wes weston]

dan roberts wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> This is my first Python project so please bear with me. I need to
> download data from Yahoo Finance in CSV format. The symbols are
> provided in a text file, and the project details are included below.
> Does anyone have some sample code that I could adapt?
> 
> Many thanks in advance,
> dan
> 
> /*---NEED TO DO------*/
> Considering IBM as an example, the steps are as follows.
> 
> A. Part 1 - download 'Historical Prices' from
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ibm
> 1. Get the Start Date from the form at the top of this page,
> http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=IBM
> (I can provide the end date.)
> 2. Click on Get Prices
> 3. Then finally click on Download to Spreadsheet and save the file
> with a name like IBM_StartDate_EndDate.csv.
> (2) and (3) are equivalent to using this link directly,
> http://ichart.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=IBM&a=00&b=2&c=1962&d=05&e=30&f=2004&g=d&ignore=.csv
> Can you please post an example of a loop that would do the above for a
> series of company symbols, saved in a text file?
> 
> B. Part 2 - download 'Options' from http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ibm
> This seems more difficult because the data is in html format (there's
> no option to download CSV files). What's the easiest/best way to take
> care of this?

dan,
    Aha, yahoo has changed the url for the file
download - and it doesn't seem to work by my
past method for some reason.
    I need this; to download historical data.
At one time I was parsing the data off the screen
but changed to downloading the file when they
made it available. I hope that old code is
still around. If/when I get it working, I'll
pass it on.
wes