C++ Program to process data from website?!

[ClobberXD]

Here's my intentions:

• Check the stock-market daily.
• Monitor prices of certain stocks.
• Alert user if price increases (or decreases) beyond specified limit.

I need your help to perform the first function - to check the market daily, but more specifically I need your help in creating a C++ program to access that website and process the data in it... OR is it much easier to just download the webpage and obtain the required data from it?

 

Thanks! 

[Unimportant]

Normally, this is done by using the API supplied by the exchange you want to monitor. They supply real-time data (as opposed to delayed data on many websites) and you might get other data like the bid/ask stack, etc...

 

(for example, nasdaq's api page: http://www.nasdaqomx.com/transactions/marketdata/europeanproducts/data-products/nasdaq-web-api-service )

 

However, in many cases this is not free. The only free solution would indeed be to download a webpage and parse the downloaded file for the price you seek. A quick test on a yahoo stockquote shows that the price is in there so you should be able to design a algorithm to extract the price from the file.

 

I don't see much use in such a program however. The things you want to implement are available automatically at any decent broker. Why would you use a clunky program that gives you an alert when you can just put a limit order at your broker ?

[Clechay]

It's not a task for C++. You can do it but you are very likely to lose insane amount of time with this language. In my opinion high-level language is much more suitable, you may like Node.JS apis because JS is very common language and npm modules like request provide tools you need.

 

[Blade of Grass]

I'd suggest against using C++ for this, you would be much better off programming this in a language like Python, JS, or PHP, heck, even Java or C# would be better suited for it. 

 

Ninjaed by Clechay!

Edited June 14, 2016 by Blade of Grass
Ninjaed

[ClobberXD]

On 6/14/2016 at 8:25 PM, Unimportant said:

Normally, this is done by using the API supplied by the exchange you want to monitor. They supply real-time data (as opposed to delayed data on many websites) and you might get other data like the bid/ask stack, etc...

 

(for example, nasdaq's api page: http://www.nasdaqomx.com/transactions/marketdata/europeanproducts/data-products/nasdaq-web-api-service )

 

However, in many cases this is not free. The only free solution would indeed be to download a webpage and parse the downloaded file for the price you seek. A quick test on a yahoo stockquote shows that the price is in there so you should be able to design a algorithm to extract the price from the file.

 

I don't see much use in such a program however. The things you want to implement are available automatically at any decent broker. Why would you use a clunky program that gives you an alert when you can just put a limit order at your broker ?

My broker doesn't provide such features... And I've had enough reprimands for mentioning C++. Which language do you suggest for this task? The only ones I'm familiar with are C, C++, HTML (extremely basic). But I'll try to learn a new one online if necessary.

 

Thanks!