Case Study - Stock prices using Yahoo data

Introduction

Stock price information for a wide range of companies is available on the Internet.
The Yahoo! Finance website includes stock price information and includes a 'Download Spreadsheet' link which provides data in comma delimited format.

XML Xdoc can convert this stock price CSV data into XML.

Example

We've created an example data file data1.csv with just a heading row and two rows of stock data.

Date,Open,High,Low,Close,Volume
11-Nov-02,15.53,15.7,14.85,14.92,7894100
08-Nov-02,15.48,15.94,15.36,15.68,9087700

Command line
Xdoc -url=http://www.trah.com/xml/data/data1.csv -output=yahoo.xml

The above XML Xdoc command line produces the XML below.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes" ?>

<document>
<row>
<col1>Date</col1>
<col2>Open</col2>
<col3>High</col3>
<col4>Low</col4>
<col5>Close</col5>
<col6>Volume</col6>
</row>
<row>
<col1>11-Nov-02</col1>
<col2>15.53</col2>
<col3>15.7</col3>
<col4>14.85</col4>
<col5>14.92</col5>
<col6>7894100</col6>
</row>
<row>
<col1>08-Nov-02</col1>
<col2>15.48</col2>
<col3>15.94</col3>
<col4>15.36</col4>
<col5>15.68</col5>
<col6>9087700</col6>
</row>
</document>

Now that the data is in XML format it could be transformed using XML tools into HTML web pages for computers, mobile phones or interactive TV.

Actual historical data for Yahoo is shown here

Information in CSV format is available for a wide range of stocks at Yahoo Finance.

www.xdoc.co.uk

Also from Trah, StarterFile: software to autorun files from CD.