Programmatically Access Currency Exchange Rates

Programmatically access currency exchange rates

You can get currency conversions in a simple format from yahoo:

For example, to convert from GBP to EUR:
http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=GBPEUR=X&f=sl1d1t1ba&e=.csv

Programmatically access Currency Exchange Rates from Yahoo Finance by Date

To retrieve historical data of currency exchange rates, you can't use Yahoo Finance. Their API only offers historical data of stocks. For example for APPLE between April the 1st 2003 and July, 30:

http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=AAPL&a=3&b=1&c=2003&d=6&e=30&f=2003&g=d&ignore=.csv

So, in your case you need to dig somewhere else. The only other main API available is OpenExchangeRate:
http://openexchangerates.org/documentation#historical-data

Notice:

Important: From end August 2012, you will need an App ID to query the Open Exchange Rates API - it's free for personal use, and cheap for apps and commercial uses.

Other option:

You could use this: Free Forex Historical Data and then use Yahoo Finance (Currency Rates) each day (at your convenience) to construct an up-to-date table with all your currencies rates needed.

EDIT

The FED offers you historical data of many currencies rates. See Data Download Program to retrieve (csv, xls, xml) historical data. You can adapt it to your needs.

How do I get currency exchange rates via an API such as Google Finance?

Thanks for all your answers.

Free currencyconverterapi:

• Rates updated every 30 min
• API key is now required for the free server.

A sample conversion URL is: http://free.currencyconverterapi.com/api/v5/convert?q=EUR_USD&compact=y

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For posterity here they are along with other possible answers:

1. Yahoo finance API Discontinued 2017-11-06###

Discontinued as of 2017-11-06 with message

It has come to our attention that this service is being used in
violation of the Yahoo Terms of Service. As such, the service is being
discontinued. For all future markets and equities data research,
please refer to finance.yahoo.com.

Request: http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?e=.csv&f=sl1d1t1&s=USDINR=X

This CSV was being used by a jQuery plugin called Curry. Curry has since (2017-08-29) moved to use fixer.io instead due to stability issues.
Might be useful if you need more than just a CSV.

2. (thanks to Keyo) Yahoo Query Language lets you get a whole bunch of currencies at once in XML or JSON. The data updates by the second (whereas the European Central Bank has day old data), and stops in the weekend. Doesn't require any kind of sign up.

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select * from yahoo.finance.xchange where pair in ("USDEUR", "USDJPY", "USDBGN", "USDCZK", "USDDKK", "USDGBP", "USDHUF", "USDLTL", "USDLVL", "USDPLN", "USDRON", "USDSEK", "USDCHF", "USDNOK", "USDHRK", "USDRUB", "USDTRY", "USDAUD", "USDBRL", "USDCAD", "USDCNY", "USDHKD", "USDIDR", "USDILS", "USDINR", "USDKRW", "USDMXN", "USDMYR", "USDNZD", "USDPHP", "USDSGD", "USDTHB", "USDZAR", "USDISK")&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys

Here is the YQL query builder, where you can test a query and copy the url: (NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/?q=show%20tables&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys#h=select%20*%20from%20yahoo.finance.xchange%20where%20pair%20in%20%28%22USDMXN%22%2C%20%22USDCHF%22%29

3. Open Source Exchange Rates API

Free for personal use (1000 hits per month)

Changing "base" (from "USD") is not allowed in Free account

Requires registration.

Request: http://openexchangerates.org/latest.json

Response:

   <!-- language: lang-js -->

    {
      "disclaimer": "This data is collected from various providers ...",
      "license": "all code open-source under GPL v3 ...",
      "timestamp": 1323115901,
      "base": "USD",
      "rates": {
          "AED": 3.66999725,
          "ALL": 102.09382091,
          "ANG": 1.78992886,
          // 115 more currency rates here ...
      }
    }

4. currencylayer API

Free Plan for 250 monthly hits

Changing "source" (from "USD") is not allowed in Free account

Requires registration.

Documentation: currencylayer.com/documentation

JSON Response:

   <!-- language: lang-js -->

    {
      [...]
      "timestamp": 1436284516,
      "source": "USD",
      "quotes": {
          "USDAUD": 1.345352401,
          "USDCAD": 1.27373397,
          "USDCHF": 0.947845302,
          "USDEUR": 0.91313905,
          "USDGBP": 0.647603397,
          // 168 world currencies
          }
      }

5. CurrencyFreaks API

Free Plan (1000 hits per month)

Changing 'Base' (From 'USD') is not allowed in free account

Requires registration

Data updated every 60 sec.

179 currencies worldwide including currencies, metals, and cryptocurrencies

Support (Even on the free plan) Shell,Node.js, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, JS, C#, C, Go, Swift.

Documentation: https://currencyfreaks.com/documentation.html

Endpoint:

$ curl 'https://api.currencyfreaks.com/latest?apikey=YOUR_APIKEY'

JSON Response:

{
    "date": "2020-10-08 12:29:00+00",
    "base": "USD",
    "rates": {
        "FJD": "2.139",
        "MXN": "21.36942",
        "STD": "21031.906016",
        "LVL": "0.656261",
        "SCR": "18.106031",
        "CDF": "1962.53482",
        "BBD": "2.0",
        "GTQ": "7.783265",
        "CLP": "793.0",
        "HNL": "24.625383",
        "UGX": "3704.50271",
        "ZAR": "16.577611",
        "TND": "2.762",
        "CUC": "1.000396",
        "BSD": "1.0",
        "SLL": "9809.999914",
        "SDG": 55.325,
        "IQD": "1194.293591",
          .
          .
          .
    [179 currencies]
    }
}

6. Fixer.io API (European Central Bank data)

Free Plan for 1,000 monthly hits

Changing "source" (from "USD") is not allowed in Free account
Requires registration.

This API endpoint is deprecated and will stop working on June 1st, 2018. For more information please visit: https://github.com/fixerAPI/fixer#readme)

Website : http://fixer.io/

Example request :
[http://api.fixer.io/latest?base=USD][7]

Only collects one value per each day

7. European Central Bank Feed

Docs:
http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/index.en.html#dev

Request: http://www.ecb.int/stats/eurofxref/eurofxref-daily.xml

XML Response:

   <!-- language: lang-xml -->

    <Cube>
      <Cube time="2015-07-07">
      <Cube currency="USD" rate="1.0931"/>
      <Cube currency="JPY" rate="133.88"/>
      <Cube currency="BGN" rate="1.9558"/>
      <Cube currency="CZK" rate="27.100"/>
    </Cube>

8. exchangeratesapi.io

According to the website:

Exchange rates API is a free service for current and historical foreign exchange rates published by the European Central Bank

This service is compatible with fixer.io and is really easy to use: no API key needed - UPDATE: API key is now needed, free tier is 250 requests/mo.

For example (this uses CURL, but you can use your favorite requesting tool):

    > curl https://api.exchangeratesapi.io/latest?base=GBP&symbols=USD&apikey=YOUR_KEY
    {"base":"GBP","rates":{"USD":1.264494191},"date":"2019-05-29"}

9. CurrencyApi.net

Free Plan for 1250 monthly hits

150 Crypto and physical currencies - live updates

Base currency is set as USD on free account

Requires registration.

Documentation: currencyapi.net/documentation

JSON Response:

    {
      "valid": true,
      "updated": 1567957373,
      "base": "USD",
      "rates": {
              "AED": 3.673042,
              "AFN": 77.529504,
              "ALL": 109.410403,
              // 165 currencies + some cryptos
          }
      }

10. Currency from LabStack

Website: https://labstack.com/currency

Documentation: https://labstack.com/docs/api/currency/convert

Pricing: https://labstack.com/pricing

Request: https://currency.labstack.com/api/v1/convert/1/USD/INR

Response:

```js
 {
   "time": "2019-10-09T21:15:00Z",
   "amount": 71.1488
 }
 ```

1: http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select * from yahoo.finance.xchange where pair in ("USDEUR", "USDJPY", "USDBGN", "USDCZK", "USDDKK", "USDGBP", "USDHUF", "USDLTL", "USDLVL", "USDPLN", "USDRON", "USDSEK", "USDCHF", "USDNOK", "USDHRK", "USDRUB", "USDTRY", "USDAUD", "USDBRL", "USDCAD", "USDCNY", "USDHKD", "USDIDR", "USDILS", "USDINR", "USDKRW", "USDMXN", "USDMYR", "USDNZD", "USDPHP", "USDSGD", "USDTHB", "USDZAR", "USDISK")&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys

11. currency-api

• Free & Blazing Fast response using CDN
• No Rate limits
• 150+ Currencies, Including Common Cryptocurrencies
• Daily Updated

Documentation: Link

Request: https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/fawazahmed0/currency-api@1/latest/currencies/eur/jpy.json

Request(Fallback): https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/fawazahmed0/currency-api@1/latest/currencies/eur/jpy.min.json

Response:

{
    "date": "2021-10-03",
    "jpy": 128.798673
}

Multi currency using rates from API

$to = '$c';

should probably just be

$to = $c;

or

$to = "$c"; // redundant "make a string of this string" version.

Single quoted strings do not interpolate variable values.

Get current currency rates automatically with a currency converter apps?

I am doing exactly what you are doing, though my main intention is to write a tutorial for the same. Here's a nice place from where you can get all the information about the exchange rate.

http://josscrowcroft.github.com/open-exchange-rates/

They update the data every hour and return the information in json format.

Have fun :)

Update to the UPDATE

Alright, so you need to read up on the following things and incorporate them in your code,

1. Receiving the data can be done by either HttpUrlConnection/Apache Http Client. (Make sure you do all your long running tasks, ie downloading data in a separate thread)
2. Most of the returned data, is usually received as XML or JSON. You need to write parsers using the classes present in Android. XmlPullParser/Dom Parser for XML or JSONObjects for JSON. Enough info is present in the Android Developer site to do that.
3. Once you parse the data, the nhow you design and present it is totally upto you.

Hope this helps you in moving ahead.

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