Investors and those interested in economic trends often find checking stock prices daily a tedious chore. In this day and age, automatic, real-time monitoring would be helpful. In this article, we present a method to get real-time stock prices using Python.

Is there a Python library for real-time stock price capture?

Yes, there are several Python libraries suitable for real-time stock price capture:

1. yfinance: This library uses Yahoo Finance to load real-time and historical financial data. It's easy to use:
python
import yfinance as yf

Get the real-time data for a stock
stock = yf.Ticker(“AAPL”)
data = stock.history(period=”1d”, interval=”1m”)
print(data)

2. Alpha Vantage: This API provides real-time and historical market data. There is a Python library that is easy to integrate.
python
from alpha_vantage.timeseries import TimeSeries

key = “your_api_key”
ts = TimeSeries(key=key, output_format=’pandas’)

Getting the real-time data
data, meta_data = ts.get_quote_endpoint(symbol=’AAPL’)
print(data)

3. IEX Cloud: Another popular API for real-time and historical market data accessible via a Python library.
python
from iexfinance.stocks import Stock

stock = Stock(“AAPL”, token=”your_api_key”)
print(stock.get_quote())

These libraries provide easy ways to monitor real-time stock prices and integrate them into your own applications.

Get real-time stock prices with Python (including sample code)
To get real-time stock prices using Python, you can use the yfinance library, which is very popular and easy to use. Here is an example of how you can do this:

Step 1: Installing the library

First you have to install the yfinance library:

pip install yfinance

Step 2: Sample code to get real-time stock prices

Here is a simple example to get real-time data for a stock (e.g. Apple — AAPL):

import yfinance as yf

Erstellen eines Ticker-Objekts für eine Aktie (z.B. Apple)
ticker = “AAPL”
stock = yf.Ticker(ticker)

Abrufen von Echtzeitdaten (historische Daten mit einem kurzen Zeitraum)
data = stock.history(period=”1d”, interval=”1m”) # “1d” für einen Tag, “1m” für jede Minute

Anzeige der letzten 5 Minuten-Daten
print(data.tail())

Explanation:

• yf.Ticker(“AAPL”): Creates a Ticker object for Apple (AAPL). You can use the ticker for other companies.
• history(period=”1d”, interval=”1m”): Gets historical data for the last day (1d) with an interval of one minute (1m). This is convenient for real-time price capture.
• data.tail(): Outputs the last 5 minute data.

Step 3: Extension (Optional)
If you want to update the data regularly, you can do this in a loop, for example to get the current prices every minute:

import time

while True:
data = stock.history(period=”1d”, interval=”1m”)
print(data.tail())
time.sleep(60) # Pause von 60 Sekunden (1 Minute)

A notice:

• The yfinance data is not true real-time data (as displayed on stock exchanges), but represents a delay of a few minutes.
• For more accurate and faster data, you could also consider APIs like Alpha Vantage or IEX Cloud.

This is an easy way to capture real-time stock prices using Python.

Summary

How about this? We have shown how to get real-time stock price data using Python. Using a common Python library, anyone can develop their own program to query stock price data.