SharePoint Stock Ticker

A frequent corporate intranet requirement is to show a stock ticker value some where in the master page, or home page.  Doing this using free services is a bit of a challenge, and the ideal scenario is to periodically cache the value into the site, where it can then be easily used without generating a large amount of traffic to the stock value provider.

Yahoo provides a stock service that given the proper URL, with return a comma delimited text result.

For example, try this URL:

http://finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=msft&f=l1c1

 

The ticker symbol, MSFT is self explanatory.  The “l1c1” code says that we want two bits of information:

• “l1” which is the last sell price
• “c1” which is the last change value.

Here is a table of available codes for the Yahoo stock data.  You can also put multiple symbols in the URL.

a	Ask	a2	Average Daily Volume	a5	Ask Size
b	Bid	b2	Ask (Real-time)	b3	Bid (Real-time)
b4	Book Value	b6	Bid Size	c	Change & Percent Change
c1	Change	c3	Commission	c6	Change (Real-time)
c8	After Hours Change (Real-time)	d	Dividend/Share	d1	Last Trade Date
d2	Trade Date	e	Earnings/Share	e1	Error Indication (returned for symbol changed / invalid)
e7	EPS Estimate Current Year	e8	EPS Estimate Next Year	e9	EPS Estimate Next Quarter
f6	Float Shares	g	Day’s Low	h	Day’s High
j	52-week Low	k	52-week High	g1	Holdings Gain Percent
g3	Annualized Gain	g4	Holdings Gain	g5	Holdings Gain Percent (Real-time)
g6	Holdings Gain (Real-time)	i	More Info	i5	Order Book (Real-time)
j1	Market Capitalization	j3	Market Cap (Real-time)	j4	EBITDA
j5	Change From 52-week Low	j6	Percent Change From 52-week Low	k1	Last Trade (Real-time) With Time
k2	Change Percent (Real-time)	k3	Last Trade Size	k4	Change From 52-week High
k5	Percebt Change From 52-week High	l	Last Trade (With Time)	l1	Last Trade (Price Only)
l2	High Limit	l3	Low Limit	m	Day’s Range
m2	Day’s Range (Real-time)	m3	50-day Moving Average	m4	200-day Moving Average
m5	Change From 200-day Moving Average	m6	Percent Change From 200-day Moving Average	m7	Change From 50-day Moving Average
m8	Percent Change From 50-day Moving Average	n	Name	n4	Notes
o	Open	p	Previous Close	p1	Price Paid
p2	Change in Percent	p5	Price/Sales	p6	Price/Book
q	Ex-Dividend Date	r	P/E Ratio	r1	Dividend Pay Date
r2	P/E Ratio (Real-time)	r5	PEG Ratio	r6	Price/EPS Estimate Current Year
r7	Price/EPS Estimate Next Year	s	Symbol	s1	Shares Owned
s7	Short Ratio	t1	Last Trade Time	t6	Trade Links
t7	Ticker Trend	t8	1 yr Target Price	v	Volume
v1	Holdings Value	v7	Holdings Value (Real-time)	w	52-week Range
w1	Day’s Value Change	w4	Day’s Value Change (Real-time)	x	Stock Exchange
y	Dividend Yield

 

To use these values in SharePoint, I’ve built a custom feature and timer job, which combined with a list in the root of your site, downloads updated stock values for your symbols every 5 minutes.  You configure which symbols to download information for by adding them to your list.

 

Once you have the data safely in your list, you can show it on any page using a simple data view, or ideally a simple ajax call using jQuery against the lists.asmx web service to save your end-users some load-time.

 

The Solution

First let’s look briefly at how the solution works, then we’ll discuss how to install it, and provide all the downloads at the bottom of the post.

 

The solution is very simple, with a code file for the timer job, and a code file for the feature receiver, which will install our timer job when the feature is activated.

 

 

I started with Andrew Connell’s Timer Job code, so the solution will build directly to a WSP from Visual Studio using the custom build targets.  You can also read there about how the feature activation installs the job.  I’ve changed this very little.

 

The actual stock data is downloaded with a trivial function leveraging the System.Net.WebClient as follows:

And here is the (somewhat rough) execute function that runs every 5 minutes to update your list:

 

 

Notice the way we get our list using the content DB, your mileage may vary.  Logging would also be a nice addition.

 

Install

 

In addition to the solution, I’ve provided a WSP for those that would like to simply install this.  Here is how you would use it:

 

Step 1:

Create a new list in the root of your site, called “StockValue”

 

Step 2:

Add columns to the list.  All strings.  “Symbol”, “Value”, and “Change”.

“Single Line of Text” is the type for all three, everything else left as default.

 

Your list should look like this:

 

 

Step 3:

Add your ticker symbols to the list, by creating a new row and populating the Symbol field.  You can optionally populate the Title field.  You can add 1 or as many as you would like.

 

Step 4:

Install the solution.  The WSP (SharePoint Solution) is available for download at the bottom of the post.  You will install this as you would any other WSP.  From a server on the farm use STSADM to add and deploy.

Give the farm a minute or two to deploy the solution.

 

Step 5:

Active the feature in your site collection, from Site Settings->Site Collection Features

This would be the site which has the list from step 2 in it, at the root, called “StockValue”.

 

Step 6:

Wait 5 minutes, for the job to run and update your list.  It should then contain the stock values.  If it is after-hours, the change amount will always be 0.

 

 

You can go check the status of the job in Central Admin, to see if it has run:

 

Downloads

Download the Visual Studio 2008 solution.

Download the compiled WSP.