Stock Market Ticker For Website

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In this article we shall work out on Live stock market ticker for website. To develop live stock market ticker for website the basic requirement is to have live data. Free live data is available at some cost, but to display tickers on website we can always go for two to three minutes delayed data, which we can download from Yahoo Finance. Yahoo Finance is giving enable use to download CSV file in the manner we want. Once we get the CSV file logic which remains is to display data and Polling of data at certain interval

Check out folder structure of our Demo Code

(Note: Demo contains Cross Currency Data as well; which will be same as Stock market data.)

In this article we shall be considering major stock exchanges, and in demo code we shall see updates related to stock exchanges.

• DOW (Symbol: ^DJI)
• Nasdaq (Symbol: ^IXIC)
• S&P 500 (Symbol: ^GSPC)
• FTSE 100 (Symbol: ^FTSE)
• DAX (Symbol: ^GDAXI)
• CAC 40 (Symbol: ^FCHI)
• Hang Seng (Symbol: ^HSI)
• NIKKEI 225 (Symbol: ^N225)
• Straits Times (Symbol: ^STI)
• BSE India (Symbol: ^BSESN)
• NSE India (Symbol: ^NSEI)

If you go to Yahoo Finance and put any of the Symbol you can check all related data. Also that data is allowed to download, we are going to use this downloaded data to display live (little delayed) data to develop Stock Market Ticker for Website. (Note: If you are not aware about ICALLBack Event handler, please refer this article ---> ICallback Event Handler Article

We are going to get data from Yahoo Finance in CSV format. So we shall write logic accordingly. Following is the function to convert CSV in to Data Table.

public static DataTable csvToDataTable(string strData, bool isRowOneHeader)
    {
        DataTable csvDataTable = new DataTable();
        //no try/catch - add these in yourselfs or let exception happen
        String[] csvData = strData.Replace("\r", "").Replace("=X", "").Split('\n');
        //if no data in file ‘manually’ throw an exception
        if (csvData.Length == 0)
        {
            throw new Exception("CSV File Appears to be Empty");
        }

        String[] headings = csvData[0].Split(',');
        int index = 0; //will be zero or one depending on isRowOneHeader
        if (isRowOneHeader) //if first record lists headers
        {
            index = 1; //so we won’t take headings as data
            //for each heading
            for (int i = 0; i < headings.Length; i++)
            {
                //replace spaces with underscores for column names
                headings[i] = headings[i].Replace("", "_");
                //add a column for each heading
                csvDataTable.Columns.Add(headings[i], typeof(string));
            }
        }
        else //if no headers just go for col1, col2 etc.
        {
            for (int i = 0; i < headings.Length; i++)
            {
                //create arbitary column names
                csvDataTable.Columns.Add("col" + (i + 1).ToString(), typeof(string));
            }
        }
        //populate the DataTable
        for (int i = index; i < csvData.Length - 1; i++)
        {
            //create new rows
            DataRow row = csvDataTable.NewRow();
            for (int j = 0; j < headings.Length; j++)
            {
                //fill them
                row[j] = csvData[i].Split(',')[j];
            }
            //add rows to over DataTable
            csvDataTable.Rows.Add(row);
        }

        //return the CSV DataTable
        return csvDataTable;
    }

Another Important Function for our development of Stock Market Ticker for website is, the function which will call Yahoo Finance to fetch desired data.

We shall user WebRequest Class to call remove CSV file i.e. Read a downloadable CSV file from remote server. Check out following function.

 public DataTable CallYahooFinance()
    {
        WebRequest req = WebRequest.Create(StaticVariables.Markets);
        WebResponse result = req.GetResponse();
        Stream ReceiveStream = result.GetResponseStream();
        Encoding encode = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-8");
        StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ReceiveStream, encode);
        string output = string.Empty;
        Char[] read = new Char[256];
        int count = sr.Read(read, 0, read.Length);
        while (count > 0)
        {
            String str = new String(read, 0, count);
            output += str;
            count = sr.Read(read, 0, read.Length);
        }
        output = output.Replace("^DJI", "DOW").Replace("^IXIC", "NASDAQ").Replace("^GSPC", "S&P500");
        output = output.Replace("^FTSE", "FTSE 100").Replace("^GDAXI", "DAX").Replace("^FCHI", "CAC 40");
        output = output.Replace("^HSI", "HANG SENG").Replace("^N225", "NIKKEI 225").Replace("^STI", "STRAITS TIMES");
        output = output.Replace("^BSESN", "SENSEX").Replace("^NSEI", "NIFTY");
        DataTable DT = csvToDataTable(output, false);
        DT.Columns[0].ColumnName = "Market";
        DT.Columns[1].ColumnName = "Last Trade";
        DT.Columns[2].ColumnName = "Change (in %)";
        return DT;
    } 

In above code "output" is the string i.e. CSV string and we have replaced Yahoo Finance Symbols with the Name of the Stock Index.

If you check above function Webrequest.Create Method contains URL. To get CSV File we are using following URL, if you simple copy paste the URL you can download CSV file. URL for Stock Market Ticker is set into Static variable.

public static class StaticVariables
{
public static string Markets = "http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=%5EDJI,%5EIXIC,%5EGSPC,%5EFTSE,%5EGDAXI,%5EFCHI,%5EN225,%5EHSI,%5ESTI,%5EBSESN,%5ENSEI&f=sl1c1&e=.csv";
}

Thats it now we got the relevant data from yahoo finance which we can display the way we want. We are using ICallback Event handler to poll data from Yahoo Server. Now if you are aware about ICallback Simply check out following functions. Where we are not doing anything special.

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (!IsPostBack)
        {
            String cbReference =
                Page.ClientScript.GetCallbackEventReference(this, "arg", "ReceiveServerData", "context");
            String callbackScript;
            callbackScript = "function CallServer(arg, context)" +
                "{ " + cbReference + ";}";
            Page.ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(this.GetType(), "CallServer", callbackScript, true);
        }
    }

Also check Region for ICallback Implementation

public void RaiseCallbackEvent(String eventArgument)
    {
    
    }
    public String GetCallbackResult()
    {
        GridView GridView1 = new GridView();
        GridView1.DataSource = CallYahooFinance();
        GridView1.DataBind();

        return getHTML(GridView1);
    }


public string getHTML(GridView _grid)
    {
        string result = string.Empty;
        using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())
        {
            HtmlTextWriter htw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw);
            _grid.RenderControl(htw);
            htw.Flush();
             result = sw.ToString();
        }
        return result;
    }
//getHTML returns HTMLString for GRIDView

Now in the HTML of our page we have only following tags.

Polling from server...
        

We use following JavaScript to Fetch live data from server side at the interval of 1000mili second.

function call()
    {
    window.document.getElementById('_polling').style.display="";
    CallServer("", "");
    }
    
     function ReceiveServerData(retValue)
    {   
        document.getElementById("result").innerHTML = retValue;
        window.document.getElementById('_polling').style.display="none";
        setTimeout("call()",1000); //Set polling to 1000mili second
    }

Implementation of above code is very simple check out Demo code for the same.
Download Demo Code here --> Stock Market Ticker For Website.zip

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Display Loading Image in Asp.net

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To display loading image we shall use following JavaScript. There are many ways to display loading, but I feel this is the simple to use and implement. We just need one div tag with position set to absolute, and put loading image inside the div tag. Check out following code.

Loading...

(Make sure you set z-index if required.)
In above I have just used text "Loading...", instead of this you can put loading images.Put this div tag as first element of FORM tag. And after above div tag immediately put following JavaScript 

And call function "init()", on "onload" event of body tag.

Done, now as your page loads you can see "Loading..."...

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Asp.Net Reading File From Url

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In this article is about Reading file from URL specially Text of CSV files, which we can directly read for the source and convert them into table. By doing this we generally avoid file handling, saving the file and then reading it again. WebRequest class of System.Net library is used to read remotely hosted text file or csv file.

We simply need to use following function which will read remote file and put it in a string format. String is named as output string.

WebRequest req = WebRequest.Create(YOURURL);
        WebResponse result = req.GetResponse();
        Stream ReceiveStream = result.GetResponseStream();
        Encoding encode = System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-8");
        StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ReceiveStream, encode);
        string output = string.Empty;
        Char[] read = new Char[256];
        int count = sr.Read(read, 0, read.Length);
        while (count > 0)
        {
            String str = new String(read, 0, count);
            output += str;
            count = sr.Read(read, 0, read.Length);
        }

We are following simple steps in Asp.net for Reading file from URL.

1. Identify the URL and create WebRequest Object
2. Get the Response Stream 
3. Encoding it in Appropriate Unicode format
4. Reading the Data Stream.
5. Finally getting the whole text string in one string variable i.e. "output" in this case.

It is very easy to in Asp.net to Read file from Url, as we have seen in above code. We can write our logic to manipulate the string.

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