How to create a stock quote fetching app in python
Question: I'm quite new to programming in **Python**.

I want to make an application which will **fetch stock prices** from [google
finance](http://www.google.com/finance). One example is CSCO _(Cisco Sytems)_.
I would then use that data to **warn the user when the stock reaches a certain
value**. It also needs to **refresh every 30 seconds**.

The problem is I dont have a clue how to fetch the data!

Anyone have any ideas?


Answer: This module comes courtesy of [Corey
Goldberg](http://www.goldb.org/goldblog/2007/09/14/PythonStockQuoteModule.aspx).

Program:

    
    
    import urllib
    import re
    
    def get_quote(symbol):
        base_url = 'http://finance.google.com/finance?q='
        content = urllib.urlopen(base_url + symbol).read()
        m = re.search('id="ref_694653_l".*?>(.*?)<', content)
        if m:
            quote = m.group(1)
        else:
            quote = 'no quote available for: ' + symbol
        return quote
    

Sample Usage:

    
    
    import stockquote
    print stockquote.get_quote('goog')
    

**Update** : Changed the regular expression to match Google Finance's latest
format (as of 23-Feb-2011). This demonstrates the main issue when relying upon
screen scraping.

