Overview

Finance::YahooQuote is a Perl module to retrieve stock (and other quotes) from Yahoo! Finance. A very vast number of fields can be retrieved, the full list comprises price and volume information (delayed from the exchanges; real-time from ECNs) as well as valuation and balance-sheet items. See below for the full set of attributes available since version 0.20 of Finance::YahooQuote.

Several functions are provided. The getquote function returns an array of pointers to arrays with the above structure. The getonequote function returns just one quote, rather than an array. It returns a simple array of values for the given symbol. The setQueryString permits to supply a new query string that will be used for subsequent data requests. The useExtendedQueryFormat and useRealtimeQueryFormat are simpler interfaces which append symbols to the default quote string, as detailed above. The getcustomquote returns an array of quotes corresponding to values for the symbols supplied in the first array reference, and the custom fields supplied in the second array reference. Here the custom fields correspond to the 'named' fields of the list below.

The download operation is efficient: only one request is made even if several symbols are requested at once. The return value of getonequote, if the backwards-compatible default settings are used, is an array with the following elements:

    0 Symbol
    1 Company Name
    2 Last Price
    3 Last Trade Date
    4 Last Trade Time
    5 Change
    6 Percent Change
    7 Volume
    8 Average Daily Vol
    9 Bid
    10 Ask
    11 Previous Close
    12 Today's Open
    13 Day's Range
    14 52-Week Range
    15 Earnings per Share
    16 P/E Ratio
    17 Dividend Pay Date
    18 Dividend per Share
    19 Dividend Yield
    20 Market Capitalization
    21 Stock Exchange
If the extended format has been selected, the following fields are also
retrieved:
    22 Short ratio
    23 1yr Target Price
    24 EPS Est. Current Yr
    25 EPS Est. Next Year
    26 EPS Est. Next Quarter
    27 Price/EPS Est. Current Yr
    28 Price/EPS Est. Next Yr
    29 PEG Ratio
    30 Book Value
    31 Price/Book
    32 Price/Sales
    33 EBITDA
    34 50-day Moving Avg
    35 200-day Moving Avg
If the real-time format has been selected, the following fields are also
retrieved:
    36 Ask (real-time)
    37 Bid (real-time)
    38 Change in Percent (real-time)
    39 Last trade with time (real-time)
    40 Change (real-time)
    41 Day range (real-time)
    42 Market-cap (real-time)

      Symbol                            s
      Name                              n
      Last Trade (With Time)            l
      Last Trade (Price Only)           l1
      Last Trade Date                   d1
      Last Trade Time                   t1
      Last Trade Size                   k3
      Change and Percent Change         c
      Change                            c1
      Change in Percent                 p2
      Ticker Trend                      t7
      Volume                            v
      Average Daily Volume              a2
      More Info                         i
      Trade Links                       t6
      Bid                               b
      Bid Size                          b6
      Ask                               a
      Ask Size                          a5
      Previous Close                    p
      Open                              o
      Day's Range                       m
      52-week Range                     w
      Change From 52-wk Low             j5
      Pct Chg From 52-wk Low            j6
      Change From 52-wk High            k4
      Pct Chg From 52-wk High           k5
      Earnings/Share                    e
      P/E Ratio                         r
      Short Ratio                       s7
      Dividend Pay Date                 r1
      Ex-Dividend Date                  q
      Dividend/Share                    d
      Dividend Yield                    y
      Float Shares                      f6
      Market Capitalization             j1
      1yr Target Price                  t8
      EPS Est. Current Yr               e7
      EPS Est. Next Year                e8
      EPS Est. Next Quarter             e9
      Price/EPS Est. Current Yr         r6
      Price/EPS Est. Next Yr            r7
      PEG Ratio                         r5
      Book Value                        b4
      Price/Book                        p6
      Price/Sales                       p5
      EBITDA                            j4
      50-day Moving Avg                 m3
      Change From 50-day Moving Avg     m7
      Pct Chg From 50-day Moving Avg    m8
      200-day Moving Avg                m4
      Change From 200-day Moving Avg    m5
      Pct Chg From 200-day Moving Avg   m6
      Shares Owned                      s1
      Price Paid                        p1
      Commission                        c3
      Holdings Value                    v1
      Day's Value Change                w1,
      Holdings Gain Percent             g1
      Holdings Gain                     g4
      Trade Date                        d2
      Annualized Gain                   g3
      High Limit                        l2
      Low Limit                         l3
      Notes                             n4
      Last Trade (Real-time) with Time  k1
      Bid (Real-time)                   b3
      Ask (Real-time)                   b2
      Change Percent (Real-time)        k2
      Change (Real-time)                c6
      Holdings Value (Real-time)        v7
      Day's Value Change (Real-time)    w4
      Holdings Gain Pct (Real-time)     g5
      Holdings Gain (Real-time)         g6
      Day's Range (Real-time)           m2
      Market Cap (Real-time)            j3
      P/E (Real-time)                   r2
      After Hours Change (Real-time)    c8
      Order Book (Real-time)            i5
      Stock Exchange                    x

Beyond stock quotes, Finance::YahooQuote can also obtain quotes for currencies (from the Philadephia exchange -- however Yahoo! appears to have stopped to support the currency symbols in a reliable manner), US mutual funds, options on US stocks, several precious metals and quite possibly more; see the Yahoo! Finance website for full information. Finance::YahooQuote can be used for stocks from the USA, Canada, various European exchanges, various Asian exchanges (Singapore, Taiwan, HongKong, Kuala Lumpur, ...) Australia and New Zealand. It should work for other markets supported by Yahoo. You may optionally override the default LWP timeout of 180 seconds by setting $Finance::YahooQuote::TIMEOUT to your preferred value. You may also provide a proxy (for the required http connection) by using the variable $Finance::YahooQuote::PROXY. Furthermore, authentication-based proxies can be used by setting the proxy user and password via the variables $Finance::YahooQuote::PROXYUSER and $Finance::YahooQuote::PROXYPASSWD. Two example scripts are provided to help with the mapping a stock symbols as well as with Yahoo! Finance server codes.

FAQs

How can one figure out the format string?

Provided a My Yahoo! account, go to the following http://edit.my.yahoo.com/config/edit_pfview?.vk=v1. Viewing the source of this page, you will come across the section that defines the menus that let you select which elements go into a particular view. The option values are the strings that pick up the information described in the menu item. For example, Symbol refers to the string s and name refers to the string l. Using sl as the format string, we would get the symbol followed by the name of the security.

The example script examine_server.sh shows this in some more detail and downloads example .csv files using GNU wget.

What about different stock symbols for the same corporation?

Download

Copyright

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

The information that you obtain with this library may be copyrighted by Yahoo! Inc., and is governed by their usage license. See the general disclaimer for more information.

Author

Last modified: Thu Mar 25 22:17:12 CDT 2010