can you make your vb program retrieve stock quotes?

[Aecaiah]

I want to make a program that will retrieve the stock quote of a company with a click of a button. Can you guys help me with the basic concept??
Where would the program be able to pull this information from?

[crptcblade]

What you could do is find a site that gives free quotes, then use the Inet Control to connect to that URL and get the source from the page. Then its just a matter of parsing the data that you get back to find what you want.

I would recommend running a quote, and copy the format of the URL, so you know what the format of the URL will be. Then, do a View Source on the page, so you can code where to look more easily.

[TomGibbons]

This needs six text boxes and a command button (GetRates).
I used this to get exchange rates in a program i wrote:
This should go in the General Declarations:

Dim rateval(1 To 6) As String
Private Declare Function URLDownloadToFile Lib "urlmon" Alias _
    "URLDownloadToFileA" (ByVal pCaller As Long, _
    ByVal szURL As String, _
    ByVal szFileName As String, _
    ByVal dwReserved As Long, _
    ByVal lpfnCB As Long) As Long
 
Public Function DownloadFile(URL As String, _
    LocalFilename As String) As Boolean
 
    Dim lngRetVal As Long
    
    lngRetVal = URLDownloadToFile(0, URL, LocalFilename, 0, 0)
    
    If lngRetVal = 0 Then DownloadFile = True
 
End Function

Private Sub Form_Load()
MsgBox DownloadFile("The location of thepage with the rates", "where to put file") 
    Dim CharFromFile As String * 100
    ratename(1) = "USD/GBP"
    ratename(2) = "CAD/GBP"
    ratename(3) = "EUR/GBP"
    ratename(4) = "FRF/GBP"
    ratename(5) = "DEM/GBP"
    ratename(6) = "JPY/GBP"
    FilePos = 1
    ratenum = 1
    Open "table.txt" For Random As #1 Len = Len(CharFromFile)
    Do
        Get #1, FilePos, CharFromFile
        PageString = PageString + CharFromFile
        FilePos = FilePos + 1
    Loop Until EOF(1)
    Close #1
    Do
        TextPos1 = InStr(1, PageString, ratename(ratenum), 1)
        TextPos2 = InStr(TextPos1, PageString, "class=", 1)
        TextPos3 = InStr(TextPos2, PageString, "</a>&nbsp", 1)
        LenOfNo = TextPos3 - (TextPos2 + 13)
        rateval(ratenum) = Mid(PageString, TextPos2 + 13, LenOfNo)
        ratenum = ratenum + 1
    Loop Until ratenum = 7
End Sub
 
Private Sub GetRates_Click()
 
ShowText1.Text = rateval(1)
ShowText2.Text = rateval(2)
ShowText3.Text = rateval(3)
ShowText4.Text = rateval(4)
ShowText5.Text = rateval(5)
ShowText6.Text = rateval(6)
End Sub
kill "location of the downloaded file"   'deletes the file

[Aecaiah]

the problem with pulling it from some website (which is the way i had it before) is that if i do it too often, will they find out?

im talking about collecting prices for all the companies in the market. So thats over 1000 quotes alredy in one shot..

maybe i should collect it in time intervals??

[crptcblade]

No matter what the interval, if you are going to hit a server over 1000 times each time, they will be pissed. I would recommend signing up for a service that provides software of their own.