![[stock prices]](http://www.csharphelper.com/howto_get_stock_prices.png)
There are many web sites that can return stock prices to a program. This program uses download.finance.yahoo.com. It builds a URL of the following form to get prices for MCI, DIS, COKE, and PEP:
http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=MCI+DIS+COKE+PEP&f=sl1d1t1c1
The end of the URL, which in this example is &f=sl1d1t1c1, tells the Yahoo server what data you want to download. The following table shows the tags you can include.
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| a | Ask |
| a2 | Average Daily Volume |
| a5 | Ask Size |
| b | Bid |
| b2 | Ask (Real-time) |
| b3 | Bid (Real-time) |
| b4 | Book Value |
| b6 | Bid Size |
| c | Change & Percent Change |
| c1 | Change |
| c3 | Commission |
| c6 | Change (Real-time) |
| c8 | After Hours Change (Real-time) |
| d | Dividend/Share |
| d1 | Last Trade Date |
| d2 | Trade Date |
| e | Earnings/Share |
| e1 | Error Indication (returned for symbol changed / invalid) |
| e7 | EPS Estimate Current Year |
| e8 | EPS Estimate Next Year |
| e9 | EPS Estimate Next Quarter |
| f6 | Float Shares |
| g | Day’s Low |
| g1 | Holdings Gain Percent |
| g3 | Annualized Gain |
| g4 | Holdings Gain |
| g5 | Holdings Gain Percent (Real-time) |
| g6 | Holdings Gain (Real-time) |
| h | Day’s High |
| i | More Info |
| i5 | Order Book (Real-time) |
| j | 52-week Low |
| j1 | Market Capitalization |
| j3 | Market Cap (Real-time) |
| j4 | EBITDA |
| j5 | Change From 52-week Low |
| j6 | Percent Change From 52-week Low |
| k | 52-week High |
| k1 | Last Trade (Real-time) With Time |
| k2 | Change Percent (Real-time) |
| k3 | Last Trade Size |
| k4 | Change From 52-week High |
| k5 | Percebt Change From 52-week High |
| l | Last Trade (With Time) |
| l1 | Last Trade (Price Only) |
| l2 | High Limit |
| l3 | Low Limit |
| m | Day’s Range |
| m2 | Day’s Range (Real-time) |
| m3 | 50-day Moving Average |
| m4 | 200-day Moving Average |
| m5 | Change From 200-day Moving Average |
| m6 | Percent Change From 200-day Moving Average |
| m7 | Change From 50-day Moving Average |
| m8 | Percent Change From 50-day Moving Average |
| n | Name |
| n4 | Notes |
| o | Open |
| p | Previous Close |
| p1 | Price Paid |
| p2 | Change in Percent |
| p5 | Price/Sales |
| p6 | Price/Book |
| q | Ex-Dividend Date |
| r | P/E Ratio |
| r1 | Dividend Pay Date |
| r2 | P/E Ratio (Real-time) |
| r5 | PEG Ratio |
| r6 | Price/EPS Estimate Current Year |
| r7 | Price/EPS Estimate Next Year |
| s | Symbol |
| s1 | Shares Owned |
| s7 | Short Ratio |
| t1 | Last Trade Time |
| t6 | Trade Links |
| t7 | Ticker Trend |
| t8 | 1 yr Target Price |
| v | Volume |
| v1 | Holdings Value |
| v7 | Holdings Value (Real-time) |
| w | 52-week Range |
| w1 | Day’s Value Change |
| w4 | Day’s Value Change (Real-time) |
| x | Stock Exchange |
| y | Dividend Yield |
This example uses these tags:
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| s | Symbol |
| l1 | Last Trade (Price Only) |
| d1 | Last Trade Date |
| t1 | Last Trade Time |
| c1 | Change |
The web site returns a single string containing the results. The stocks’ entries are separated by \r\n pairs. The values for each stock are separated by commas. The following text shows a sample.
"MCI",16.146,"1/16/2015","3:48pm",+0.096 "DIS",95.18,"1/16/2015","4:00pm",+0.83 "COKE",95.99,"1/16/2015","4:00pm",+2.13 "PEP",97.29,"1/16/2015","4:00pm",+0.62
The GetWebResponse method shown in the following code gets a web response and returns it in a string.
// Get a web response.
private string GetWebResponse(string url)
{
// Make a WebClient.
WebClient web_client = new WebClient();
// Get the indicated URL.
Stream response = web_client.OpenRead(url);
// Read the result.
using (StreamReader stream_reader = new StreamReader(response))
{
// Get the results.
string result = stream_reader.ReadToEnd();
// Close the stream reader and its underlying stream.
stream_reader.Close();
// Return the result.
return result;
}
}
This code creates a WebClient and uses its OpenRead method to get a StreamReader that can read the result of the URL request. The code reads the stream to its end and returns the resulting string.
The following code shows how the program uses the GetWebResponse method.
// Get the stock prices.
private void btnGetPrices_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.Cursor = Cursors.WaitCursor;
Application.DoEvents();
// Build the URL.
string url = "";
if (txtSymbol1.Text != "") url += txtSymbol1.Text + "+";
if (txtSymbol2.Text != "") url += txtSymbol2.Text + "+";
if (txtSymbol3.Text != "") url += txtSymbol3.Text + "+";
if (txtSymbol4.Text != "") url += txtSymbol4.Text + "+";
if (url != "")
{
// Remove the trailing plus sign.
url = url.Substring(0, url.Length - 1);
// Prepend the base URL.
const string base_url =
"http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=@&f=sl1d1t1c1";
url = base_url.Replace("@", url);
// Get the response.
try
{
// Get the web response.
string result = GetWebResponse(url);
Console.WriteLine(result.Replace("\\r\\n", "\r\n"));
// Pull out the current prices.
string[] lines = result.Split(
new char[] { '\r', '\n' },
StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
txtPrice1.Text = decimal.Parse(lines[0].Split(',')[1]).ToString("C3");
txtPrice2.Text = decimal.Parse(lines[1].Split(',')[1]).ToString("C3");
txtPrice3.Text = decimal.Parse(lines[2].Split(',')[1]).ToString("C3");
txtPrice4.Text = decimal.Parse(lines[3].Split(',')[1]).ToString("C3");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message, "Read Error",
MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Exclamation);
}
}
this.Cursor = Cursors.Default;
}
The code builds the URL from the symbols in the program’s text boxes. It calls the GetWebResponse and parses the result to find the stock prices. After it finds each price, it converts it into a decimal value and displays it as currency with 3 digits after the decimal point.
This example only uses the first value, the stock price, so you really don’t need the other tags in the URL. I’ve put them in here just to show how you can add more tags.
Note that this web site returns a string with the following format if you try to look up a stock symbol that doesn’t exist.
"MCIX",0.00,"N/A","N/A",N/A
In that case, the program displays 0.00 for the price (which is better than crashing).
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Beginner developer just looking for quality tips.
Pingback: Graph stock prices downloaded from the internet in C# - C# HelperC# Helper
This is amazing, thank you!
Pingback: Continuously graph stock prices in C# - C# HelperC# Helper
Really helpful.
Also, I was wondering if this program was adaptable to be able to pull the close price from the last day in the previous month or potentially any previous month of ones choice? Or if it would be possible to change to different financial websites for comparative perspective?
You should be able to do that. You just need to find the right URLs to get the closing prices or to get data from other web sites.
Thanks for this useful and straightforward article.
I took one of your online VB classes and it was equally well-done.
All the best.
PLEASE post a review of the online course! I really need them!
Thank you. This is exactly what i was looking for!
But how do I get the data from a specific stock exchange, e.g. Xetra? Is there a way to do that?
Sorry for the delay, but this is awesome! Thanks for your work.
Pingback: Get stock prices from different exchanges in C# - C# HelperC# Helper
Hi,
This code not getting quotes from India exchanges. Given symbol SBI.NS
The only issue I know of is that the server returns nothing if the exchange is closed at the time. (It’s closed now so I can’t test it.)
If that’s not the issue, then I don’t know what’s wrong.
I am not a Web software guy so feel free to point and laugh. I basically implemented the code given above and am getting an exception thrown with the following error message: “The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.” Here is the URL info being sent to Yahoo – I want to get different info but thought I would test it first with the tags you used – “http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=T+ED&f=sl1d1t1c1” Thanks in advance for any help.
OK, it looks like maybe Yahoo discontinued this service on 2 Nov. Is that what you have seen?
I think you’re right. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of service disappear. It’s too bad because this one was reasonably easy to use.
They say their terms of service were being violated. It’s possible someone was spamming their web pages. All of these services limit the number of queries per hour.
I eventually found this post on a Yahoo forum. I’m new to C#, think old dude + COBOL, Fortran, C, C++, VB6, and really like your site, thanks for doing this. https://forums.yahoo.net/t5/Known-issues-and-updates/Yahoo-Finance-API-disabled/m-p/392760#M14
It doesn’t work anymore. Yahoo site is returning, “This site can’t be reached”
Any updates on this?
Unfortunately Yahoo stopped allowing this. You can still download data from them but AFAIK you need to do it interactively.
This post on Data Driven Investor.com has some info about some alternative APIS.
6 Alternatives to the Yahoo Finance API