Cool Stock Ticker - but how

July 9, 2008 9:01 AM

Stock ticker ... how are they doing this?

I love the simplicity of this simple stock ticker used on this site(right side of page). I looked at the code but don't see how it is calling the information.

I've checked out Yahoo and several other stock ticker apps but none of them have this nice, clean approach (plus I don't want adverts all over the site). Any help would be greatly appreciated THANKS!!

posted by j.p. Hung to computers & internet (7 comments total)

"I looked at the code but don't see how it is calling the information."

You looked at the server side code or just the HTML source? Because the actual query is being done on the server and rendered into the page. It doesn't give your browser the mystical power to fetch data from a quote server.
posted by majick at 9:14 AM on July 9, 2008

If you go here: http://ir.aquaamerica.com/stock.cfm

You can see the data is provided by TurboFeed, which is part of eSignal. eSignal offers private party solutions - I am sure it was done by them.
posted by jaythebull at 9:19 AM on July 9, 2008

You are probably thinking of a Javascript stock tickers. This one is inserted server side, which is as much as anyone can find out about it from just looking at the HTML source. From the the file extensions of the pages, the language used seems to be Coldfusion. The data for this kind of widget is usually retrieved as an RSS feed.

There are about a gazillion combinations of data source, format, backend scripting language, and libraries, or roll your own solutions for this, though.
posted by uncle harold at 9:19 AM on July 9, 2008

Just the html source, I don't have the server side code obviously. But you are right, I was incorrect to say "calling". I realize the info is coming from the server. Just don't know the nuts and bolts of how it's done. Thanks!
posted by j.p. Hung at 9:20 AM on July 9, 2008

I know starting last week google finance have the same functionality for realtime stocks
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/real-time-quotes-for-free.html
posted by radsqd at 12:11 PM on July 9, 2008

Market information is heavily gaurded and very difficult to get to depending on the ticker, the dimensions of the information you want, and how up to date you want it to be. Basically, I'm just letting you know that you should not expect real time data without a lot of money, and even then your quotes will still be delayed by a few seconds.

I would look at Yahoo Finance rather than Google, although the suggestion was a good one, and probably the best solution for you. There's a pretty good Perl API that makes requests to Yahoo Finance. You can use it to poll historical information or real time pricing. Typically this information is 15 minutes slow, but I doubt that will matter to your visitors. Unless they're day traders or professionals, in which case they'll check out the market through their own special window without your help. (Market participants rarely trust each other). Even if the API isn't working right, a couple request for ticker information to Yahoo Finance should reveal to you the formatting for their URL's. You can use this information to make your own requests for data, and parse it server side.

I recommend the above Yahoo Finance idea running every 5 minutes or so server side, updating a file, which is included on your website.

Hope this helps.
posted by teabag at 12:37 PM on July 9, 2008

PS - I use market data analytically, not for displaying on a website. So I have an obvious bias towards practically using the data :) There probably is a great API out there to display stock information, I just don't know it.
posted by teabag at 12:50 PM on July 9, 2008