Stock quote API ?

[Irv Kalb]

> On Mar 10, 2018, at 9:26 PM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2018 at 4:18 PM, Irv Kalb <Irv at furrypants.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I teach courses on beginning Python (Python3).  In one of my topics, I explain how we can write simple programs that reach out to the internet and download data (request/response).
>> 
>> I show a number of examples using:   urllib.request.urlopen( <urlWIthParameters> )  to get things like weather data, currency exchange rates, etc.
>> 
>> I just tried my examples again, and they are all working fine, except for one.  I had an example where I used the call above to get simple (American) stock quotes from Yahoo.  However, with this example, now I get a bunch errors.  In tracking it down, I found that Yahoo has shut down this public API, discontinued this service.
>> 
>> So ... I am looking for a replacement.  I have done quite a bit of searching, but I have not been able to find a simple way to get a stock quote (no need for historical data - most recent price is fine).  I have found many examples where people have built custom packages for doing this type of thing.  However, I am in a college environment, and I cannot install any new packages on the computers there.  I've also seen examples of people building SQL-style queries to get this type of information, but that's beyond what I am trying to teach.
>> 
>> Wondering if anyone has any example of an API where I could just make a call using Python Standard Library interfaces to get stock quotes?
>> 
> 
> Check out https://www.alphavantage.co/ for something you can query for
> free. Extensive and amazingly useful. One of my students did some
> second-tier analysis on the data they provide as a capstone project on
> stock trading analysis.
> 
> You may want to consider, though, modifying the "no new packages"
> rule. The 'requests' library is WAY better for teaching Python and web
> APIs than the raw urllib. Get just a small handful of pip-installable
> packages whitelisted and your life will be better.
> 
> ChrisA
> 

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for this.  It is very close to what I am looking for.  I had seen this early in my searches but I didn't go into it in detail because it looked like it was designed to give way more information than I was looking for - for example, the first example is about time series data.  

I did look into it today, and I got a free API key to check it out.  It does have the ability to give just a stock quote for a symbol, but it looks like the minimum I can get back is a csv:

symbol,price,volume,timestamp
MSFT,96.1800,--,2018-03-09 16:01:30

which is easy enough for me to break apart.  I just wish there was a way to eliminate the header line so I wouldn't have to go through an explanation about that.  

Thanks very much.  If I can't find another one that just give back a price, I'll probably use this one.

Irv

PS:  The "no new packages" rule is not mine.  It's the rule imposed by the college.  They are the administrators of the computers and I don't have an admin password.