How to create a stock quote fetching app in python

Question

I\'m quite new to programming in Python.

I want to make an application which will fetch stock prices from google finance. One exam

Answer 1

import urllib
import re

def get_quote(symbol):
    base_url = 'http://finance.google.com/finance?q='
    content = urllib.urlopen(base_url + symbol).read()
    m = re.search('id="ref_(.*?)">(.*?)<', content)
    if m:
        quote = m.group(2)
    else:
        quote = 'no quote available for: ' + symbol
    return quote

I find that if you use ref_(.*?) and use m.group(2) you will get a better result as the reference id changes from stock to stock.

Answer 2

I suggest using the HTMLParser to get the value of the meta tags google places in it's html

<meta itemprop="name"
        content="Cerner Corporation" />
<meta itemprop="url"
        content="https://www.google.com/finance?cid=92421" />
<meta itemprop="imageUrl"
        content="https://www.google.com/finance/chart?cht=g&q=NASDAQ:CERN&tkr=1&p=1d&enddatetime=2014-04-09T12:47:31Z" />
<meta itemprop="tickerSymbol"
        content="CERN" />
<meta itemprop="exchange"
        content="NASDAQ" />
<meta itemprop="exchangeTimezone"
        content="America/New_York" />
<meta itemprop="price"
        content="54.66" />
<meta itemprop="priceChange"
        content="+0.36" />
<meta itemprop="priceChangePercent"
        content="0.66" />
<meta itemprop="quoteTime"
        content="2014-04-09T12:47:31Z" />
<meta itemprop="dataSource"
        content="NASDAQ real-time data" />
<meta itemprop="dataSourceDisclaimerUrl"
        content="//www.google.com/help/stock_disclaimer.html#realtime" />
<meta itemprop="priceCurrency"
        content="USD" />

With code like this:

import urllib
try:
    from html.parser import HTMLParser
except:
    from HTMLParser import HTMLParser

class QuoteData:
    pass

class GoogleFinanceParser(HTMLParser):
    def __init__(self):
        HTMLParser.__init__(self)
        self.quote = QuoteData()
        self.quote.price = -1

    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        if tag == "meta":
            last_itemprop = ""
            for attr, value in attrs:
                if attr == "itemprop":
                    last_itemprop = value

                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "name":
                    self.quote.name = value
                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "price":
                    self.quote.price = value
                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "priceCurrency":
                    self.quote.priceCurrency = value
                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "priceChange":
                    self.quote.priceChange = value
                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "priceChangePercent":
                    self.quote.priceChangePercent = value
                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "quoteTime":
                    self.quote.quoteTime = value
                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "exchange":
                    self.quote.exchange = value
                if attr == "content" and last_itemprop == "exchangeTimezone":
                    self.quote.exchangeTimezone = value


def getquote(symbol):
    url = "http://finance.google.com/finance?q=%s" % symbol
    content = urllib.urlopen(url).read()

    gfp = GoogleFinanceParser()
    gfp.feed(content)
    return gfp.quote;


quote = getquote('CSCO')
print quote.name, quote.price