Stocks/get prices

This document explains how to import historic stock quotes into gnucash

Some knowledge of perl and python is required. This example uses GnuCash's Python Bindings. Ensure that both perl and python are available.

To run the scripts below you need a gnucash xml file named "test.gnucash". For illustration, we show how to get prices for an account named Intel that contains shares of the INTC stock. The method for adding the INTC stock to Gnucash is explained here Add stock to portfolio. You have additionally to add one price of INTC into the database by hand.

Get the data

We get the data with the perl module Finance::QuoteHist. A sample perl script to get the quotes is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Finance::QuoteHist;
print "Will get stock quotes of $ARGV[0] and save it into the file $ARGV[0]\n";
$fname = $ARGV[0];
   open (MYFILE, ">$fname");
   $q = Finance::QuoteHist->new
      (
       symbols    => [($ARGV[0])],
       start_date => '01/01/2000',
       end_date   => 'today',
      ); 


print "name,date, open, high, low, close, volume\n";
foreach $row ($q->quotes()) {
       ($name,$date, $open, $high, $low, $close, $volume) = @$row;
       print MYFILE "$name,$date, $open, $high, $low, $close, $volume\n";
   }

close(MYFILE);

On Unix/Linux, save the program text (above) into a file (e.g., get_quotes), make the script executable by running "chmod a+x get_quotes". Execute it with the argument INTC to get the Intel prices saved into the file INTC % chmod a+x get_quotes % ./get_quotes INTC

The INTC file should look similar to this:

INTC,2000/01/03, 83.2700, 87.3700, 83.2500, 87.0000, 57710200
INTC,2000/01/04, 85.4400, 87.8700, 82.2500, 82.9400, 51019600
INTC,2000/01/05, 83.0000, 85.8700, 80.5000, 83.6200, 52389000

Import the data into Gnucash

The following python script will read the text file "INTC" and add the prices to the Gnucash file "test.gnucash".

from gnucash import Session, Account, Split
import gnucash
import datetime
from fractions import Fraction

FILE = "./test.gnucash"
url = "xml://"+FILE

# Read data from file
f = open('INTC')
data = []
while 1:
    tmp = f.readline()
    if(len(tmp)<2):
        break
    
    data.append(tmp)

f.close()

stock_date = []
stock_price = []
for i in range(1,len(data)):
    year = int(data[i].rsplit(',')[1].rsplit('/')[0])
    month = int(data[i].rsplit(',')[1].rsplit('/')[1])
    day = int(data[i].rsplit(',')[1].rsplit('/')[2])
    stock_date.append(datetime.datetime(year,month,day))
    stock_price.append(float(data[i].rsplit(',')[5]))

# Initialize Gnucash session
session = Session(url, False, False, False)
root = session.book.get_root_account()
book = session.book
account = book.get_root_account()
pdb = book.get_price_db()
commod_table = book.get_table()
stock = commod_table.lookup('NASDAQ', 'INTC')
cur = commod_table.lookup('CURRENCY', 'USD')
# Add the prices
pdb = book.get_price_db()
# Get stock data
pl = pdb.get_prices(stock,cur)
if len(pl)<1:
  print 'Need at least one database entry to clone ...'

pl0 = pl[0]
for i in range(1,len(pl)):
  pdb.remove_price(pl[i])

for i in range(0,len(stock_date)):
  p_new = pl0.clone(book)
  p_new = gnucash.GncPrice(instance=p_new)
  print 'Adding',i,stock_date[i],stock_price[i]
  p_new.set_time(stock_date[i])
  v = p_new.get_value()
  v.num = int(Fraction.from_float(stock_price[i]).limit_denominator(100000).numerator)
  v.denom = int(Fraction.from_float(stock_price[i]).limit_denominator(100000).denominator)
  p_new.set_value(v)
  pdb.add_price(p_new)

# Clean up
session.save()
session.end()
session.destroy()

You now have the stock quotes from Intel in your Gnucash file!

Further Information

• Python Bindings in this Wiki.
• python-bindings in doxygen source-documentation