Provided by: libfinance-yahooquote-perl_0.25_all 
NAME
Finance::YahooQuote - Get stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance
SYNOPSIS
use Finance::YahooQuote;
# setting TIMEOUT and PROXY is optional
$Finance::YahooQuote::TIMEOUT = 60;
$Finance::YahooQuote::PROXY = "http://some.where.net:8080";
@quote = getonequote $symbol; # Get a quote for a single symbol
@quotes = getquote @symbols; # Get quotes for a bunch of symbols
useExtendedQueryFormat(); # switch to extended query format
useRealtimeQueryFormat(); # switch to real-time query format
@quotes = getquote @symbols; # Get quotes for a bunch of symbols
@quotes = getcustomquote(["DELL","IBM"], # using custom format
["Name","Book Value"]); # note array refs
DESCRIPTION
This module gets stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance. The getonequote function will return a
quote for a single stock symbol, while the getquote function will return a quote for each
of the stock symbols passed to it. getcustomquote allows to specify a format other than
the default to take advantage of the extended range of available information.
The download operation is efficient: only one request is made even if several symbols are
requested at once. The return value of getonequote 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)
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.
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. The regression tests scripts in the t/ subdirectory of the
source distribution also contain simple examples.
The available custom fields
The following list contains all the available data fields at Yahoo! along with the
corresponding format string entry:
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
FAQs
How can one figure out the format string?
Provided a My Yahoo! (http://my.yahoo.com) account, go to the following URL:
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?
This can be issue. For the first few years, Yahoo! Finance's servers appeared to be cover
their respective local markets. E.g., the UK-based servers provided quotes for Europe, the
Australian one for the Australia and New Zealand and so on. Hence, one needed to branch
and bound code and map symbols to their region's servers.
It now appears that this is no longer required, which is good news as it simplifies
coding. However, some old symbols are no longer supported -- yet other, and supported,
codes exist for the same company. For example, German stocks used to quoted in terms or
their cusip-like 'WKN'. The main server does not support these, but does support newer,
acronym-based symbols. The example script examine_server.sh helps in finding the mapping
as e.g. from 555750.F to DTEGN.F for Deutsche Telekom.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1998 - 2002 Dj Padzensky Copyright 2002 - 2007 Dirk Eddelbuettel
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
http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/gen_disclaimer.html for more information.
AUTHOR
Dj Padzensky ("djpadz@padz.net"), PadzNet, Inc., wrote the original version. Dirk
Eddelbuettel ("edd@debian.org") provided several extensions based on DJ's original work
and is the current maintainer.
SEE ALSO
The Finance::YahooQuote home pages are found at http://www.padz.net/~djpadz/YahooQuote/
and http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/yahooquote.html.
The smtm (Show Me The Money) program uses Finance::YahooQuote for a customisable
stock/portfolio ticker and chart display, see http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/smtm.html
for more. The beancounter program uses it to store quotes in a SQL database, see
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/beancounter.html.