Stock quote API ?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 3:19 PM, Irv Kalb <Irv at furrypants.com> wrote:
>
>> 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.

It's usually easier to find a decent API that gives too much info than
to find something that gives exactly what you want - because "what you
want" usually isn't the same as "what someone else wants", and the
easiest way to give both is to give lots of info.

> 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.
>

Oh, I'm sure. But talk to the college about getting a small number of
packages whitelisted. You don't have to ask for arbitrary package
installation, just for a tiny handful of really REALLY useful
packages. If you were teaching data science with Python, would you
restrict yourself to the standard library, or would you use numpy,
pandas, etc? Web development is the same - while you CAN do everything
with just the stdlib, it's way better to pick up a few well-known
packages that tie in well with that.

ChrisA