A Perl Script for Stock or Mutual Fund Quotes

(Disclaimer: Securities indicated below are just examples and are not recommendations by the author. Obtain and read the prospectus before investing. For SEC filings by companies and mutual funds, visit the EDGAR database.)

Note: Perl 5.004 or later is required. However, the script requires no modules are than a few that are present in the standard library.

This script obtains quotes from the Yahoo! Finance quote server. It uses the CSV (comma-separated values) data available via the "Download Spreadsheet Format" link on that site.

Note that the script itself could have been written far more easily using the LWP module, which is available at CPAN. Thus it serves only to demonstrate how a web client might communicate with a CGI program on a remote site using a simple GET query.

Change Log

January 12, 1999

• Initial release. The old script that queried the SECAPL server is still available at this page.

Get the script.

Usage

quote2.pl ticker [ticker...]

The script takes one or more ticker symbols on the command line. These ticker symbols may be stocks, mutual funds, or anything that Yahoo! Finance accepts.

Example

Tue Jan 12 01:50:45 (sam:cheah):~
$ quote2.pl mqifx smnxx xon
Connecting to quote.yahoo.com (204.71.200.146) port 80...
Connected.
Ticker:        MQIFX
Last trade:    17.01
Last trade at: 1/11/1999 5:52PM
Change:        -0.02 (-0.12%)
Opened at:     N/A
Day range:     N/A - N/A
Volume:        N/A

Ticker:        SMNXX
Last trade:    4.65
Last trade at: 1/11/1999 5:54PM
Change:        N/A (0.00%)
Opened at:     N/A
Day range:     N/A - N/A
Volume:        N/A

Ticker:        XON
Last trade:    71.25
Last trade at: 1/11/1999 4:31PM
Change:        -3.0625 (-4.12%)
Opened at:     72.75
Day range:     70.8125 - 73.5
Volume:        5727200

Tue Jan 12 01:50:47 (sam:cheah):~
$

CGI version of the script

By popular request, a CGI-ready version of the script is available here.

A live demo is not available at this time but assuming I have installed it into my cgi-bin directory, the following URL will bring up a form where you can enter ticker symbols to query:

http://localhost/cgi-bin/quotcgi.pl

And the following URL will display information on the same trio of securities as above:

http://localhost/cgi-bin/quotcgi.pl?tickers=MQIFX+SMNXX+XON

Problems? Questions?

Send me e-mail and I'll look into it.

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