ystockquote.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
#
#  Copyright (c) 2007-2008, Corey Goldberg (corey@goldb.org)
#
#  license: GNU LGPL
#
#  This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
#  modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
#  License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
#  version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

import urllib

"""
This is the "ystockquote" module.

This module provides a Python API for retrieving stock data from Yahoo Finance.

sample usage:
>>> import ystockquote
>>> print ystockquote.get_price('GOOG')
529.46
"""

def get_historical_prices(symbol, start_date, end_date):
    """
    Get historical prices for the given ticker symbol.
    Date format is 'YYYYMMDD'

    Returns a nested list.
    """
    
    url = 'http://ichart.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=%s&' % symbol + \
          'd=%s&' % str(int(end_date[4:6]) - 1) + \
          'e=%s&' % str(int(end_date[6:8])) + \
          'f=%s&' % str(int(end_date[0:4])) + \
          'g=d&' + \
          'a=%s&' % str(int(start_date[4:6]) - 1) + \
          'b=%s&' % str(int(start_date[6:8])) + \
          'c=%s&' % str(int(start_date[0:4])) + \
          'ignore=.csv'
    days = urllib.urlopen(url).readlines()
    data = [day[:-1].split(',') for day in days] #ORIGINALLY :-2
    
    return data