Stock Quotes with PHP

Yahoo! Finance provides quotes of virtually any stock in CSV format - all you need to supply is its ticker symbol. This is great for PHP developers who want to display quotes on a finance related website.

Now for a function that makes getting stock quotes feel like child's play:

function getQuote($symbol) 
{
 
 $symbol  = urlencode( trim( substr(strip_tags($symbol),0,7) ) ); 
 $yahooCSV = "http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=$symbol&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgvpnbaejkr&o=t";
 
 $csv = fopen($yahooCSV,"r");

 if($csv) 
 {
  list($quote['symbol'], $quote['last'], $quote['date'], $quote['timestamp'], $quote['change'], $quote['open'],
    $quote['high'], $quote['low'], $quote['volume'], $quote['previousClose'], $quote['name'], $quote['bid'],
    $quote['ask'], $quote['eps'], $quote['YearLow'], $quote['YearHigh'], $quote['PE']) = fgetcsv($csv, ','); 
  
  fclose($csv);
  
  return $quote; 
 } 
 else 
 {
  return false;
 }
}

The function returns an array of the stock's information. Here is a sample PHP script that uses the above function to display all the available stock information about the Royal Bank of Scotland (Ticker: RBS.L).

$RBSQuote = getQuote("RBS.L"); //Returns an array of stock information

echo  "Symbol ".$RBSQuote['symbol']."<br/>";
echo "Last ".$RBSQuote['last']."<br/>";
echo "Date ".$RBSQuote['date']."<br/>";
echo "Timestamp ".$RBSQuote['timestamp']."<br/>";
echo "Change ".$RBSQuote['change']."<br/>";
echo "Open ".$RBSQuote['open']."<br/>";
echo "High ".$RBSQuote['high']."<br/>";
echo "Low ".$RBSQuote['low']."<br/>";
echo "Volume ".$RBSQuote['volume']."<br/>";
echo "Previous Close ".$RBSQuote['previousClose']."<br/>";
echo "Name ".$RBSQuote['name']."<br/>";
echo "Bid ".$RBSQuote['bid']."<br>";
echo "Ask ".$RBSQuote['ask']."<br/>";
echo "EPS ".$RBSQuote['eps']."<br/>";
echo "Year High ".$RBSQuote['YearLow']."<br/>";
echo "Year Low ".$RBSQuote['YearHigh']."<br/>";
echo "PE ".$RBSQuote['PE'];

A pretty nifty piece of code that adds extra utility to your website. I like it because it's simple and concise.

A PHP class called PHPQUOTE is available at Booyah Media that is capable of performing the same task as above in a more object orientated way. PHPQUOTE Download