Finance::Quote Hackers Guide
Paul Fenwick <pjf@cpan.org>, May 2000

$Version$

0. Table of Contents
====================

	1. Introduction
	2. How to write a Finance::Quote module.
		2.1. The package name.
		2.2. The methods() subroutine.
		2.3. The functions specified by methods().
		2.4. Currency.
		2.5. Thngs to avoid.
		2.6. Using your new module.
	3. How to contribute your module to the world.
	4. How to find out more?
	5. How to join the mailing lists?

1. Introduction
===============

This hacker's guide is primarily a tutorial on how to build your own
Finance::Quote pluggable module.  After reading this guide, you should
be able to write your own module to provide extra methods and functionality
to the Finance::Quote library.

This guide assumes that you are familiar with perl.

2. How to write a Finance::Quote module
=======================================

Finding a source of information, and writing code to parse and interpret
that information is a difficult task.  As such, we've aimed to make
writing a Finance::Quote module as easy as possible.  There are only
a few simple rules you need to follow:

2.1. The package name.
----------------------
Finance::Quote expects that its loadable modules will be in the
Finance::Quote namespace somewhere.  Hence, if you were writing
a module called "DodgyBank" that returned information on DodgyBank's
managed funds, a reasonable name for that module would be
Finance::Quote::DodgyBank.

2.2. The methods() subroutine.
------------------------------
Your module must have a subroutine named methods().  This function will
be called by the Finance::Quote harness when it loads your module, and
is used to determine which methods your module provides.  The methods()
function must return a hash of method names and subroutine references.
For example, if you had written a module which provides access to
DodgyBank's managed funds, you might have the following

	package Finance::Quote::DodgyBank;
	sub methods { return ( dodgyfunds => \&funds 
                               dodgyloans => \&loans ); }

This would indicate that your package provides methods for
"dodgyfunds" and "dodgyloans", and that the subroutines
"funds" and "loans" should be called to access that information.

The following method names should be used for the following information
sources:

	Method-Name			Source
	---------------------------------------------------------
	australia			Australian Stocks
	canada				Canadian Stocks
	europe				European Stocks
	fidelity			Fidelity Investments
	nasdaq				NASDAQ
	nyse				New York Stock Exchange
	tiaacref			TIAA-CREF
	troweprice			T. Rowe. Price
	usa				USA Stocks

Method names should be lower-case, consist of alphanumeric characters
(including underscore) only, and always begin with a letter.  This is
not enforced, but future versions of the Finance::Quote framework may 
rely upon it.

It's strongly recommended that you also provide a unique name for your
method, in case you (or others) wish to call that method exclusively
in code.  Hence if you had written a module to fetch information from
the NYSE from Yohoo!, you might implement the following methods
function:

	sub methods { return ( nyse => \&yohoo,
			       yohoo => \&yohoo ); }

This means that people who only want to use your function can use
$quoter->fetch('yohoo',@stocks), but those who don't care where
their NYSE stock information is fetched from can use
$quoter->fetch('nyse',@stocks).  The first form allows you to know exactly
where the information is coming from.  In the second, failover methods mean
that many different functions could be used to fetch the stock information,
not just the one you have defined.

2.3 The functions specified by methods().
-----------------------------------------
The functions referred to by methods() will be passed a Finance::Quote
object when called, and a list of zero or more symbol names.  The
Finance::Quote object provides the following ready-to-use methods:

	user_agent();	# Provides a ready-to-use LWP::UserAgent

	parse_csv();	# Parses a list of comma-separated values
			# and returns an array.

The user_agent() method should be used if possible to fetch the information,
as it should be already configured to use the timeout, proxy, and other
settings requested by the calling program.

Your function should return a two-dimensional hash as specified in the
Finance::Quote man-page.  Eg:

	$hash{$symbol,'last'} = $last_price;
	$hash{$symbol,'name'} = $stock_name;
	# etc etc.

When returning your hash, you should check the context that your
function was called in.  If it was called in a scalar context, then
you should return a hashref instead.  This can be easily done
with the following:

	return wantarray() ? %hash : \%hash;

It is ESSENTIAL that your hash contain a true value for {$symbol,'success'}
for information that has been successfully obtained.  If the information
was not obtained for any reason, then {$symbol,'success'} should
be set to a false value (preferably 0), and a human-readable error
message placed in {$symbol,'errormsg'}.  The following code snippet
demonstrates this:

	sub funds {

		my $quoter = shift;	# The Finance::Quote object.
		my @stocks = @_;
		my %info;

		my $DODGY_URL = "http://dodgybank.xxx/funds.csv?";

		my $ua = $quoter->user_agent;	# This gives us a user-agent
						# with timeouts, proxies,
						# etc already configured.

		my $response = $ua->request(GET $DODGY_URL);
		unless ($response->is_success) {
			foreach my $stock (@stocks) {
				$info{$stock,"success"} = 0;
				$info{$stock,"errormsg"} = "HTTP failure";
			}
			return wantarray ? %info : \%info;
		}

		# Do stuff with the information returned....

	}

It is valid to use "return" with no arguments if all stock lookups failed,
however this does not provide any information as to WHY the lookups
failed.  If at all possible, the errormsg labels should be set.

It is also very very strongly recommended that you place your module's
name in the {$stock,"source"} field.  This allows others to check where
information was obtained, and to use it appropriately.

2.4. Currency
-------------
Finance::Quote has support for multiple currencies and for currency
conversion.  As long as you provide a little bit of information about
the information you are returning, the Finance::Quote framework can
do all the hard stuff for you.

If you are returning information on a stock in a particular currency,
then you can enter the ISO currency code into the "currency" field
associated with the stock.  Eg:

	$info{$stock,"currency"} = "AUD";  # Australian Dollars

If the information you are returning does not have a currency
(because it's an index like the Dow Jones Industrial or the
All Oridinaries, or because you're returning percentages) then
you should not set the currency field for that stock.  Finance::Quote
knows not to attempt currency conversion for stocks without
a currency field.

If you do have a currency field, then by default Finance::Quote will
arrange for the automatic conversion of a number of fields.  By
default, these fields are last, high, low, net, bid, ask, close, open, 
day_range, year_range, eps, div, cap, nav and price.  Of course,
there may be some cases where this set is not appropriate, or where there
are extra fields that should be converted.  This can be indicated
by writing a function called "currency_fields()" in your module,
that returns a list of fields that can undergo currency conversion.
Eg:

	sub currency_fields {
		return qw/high low price bid/;
	}

currency_fields() will be passed a Finance::Quote object as its
first argument, and a method called default_currency_fields()
is available through this object.  This is useful if you want
to use the defaults, but also add some of your own:

	sub currency_fields {
		my $quoter = shift;
		return ($quoter->default_currency_fields, "commission");
	}

In the example above, the default fields would be available for currency
conversion, but the "commission" field would also be converted.

2.5. Things to avoid
--------------------
Some sources of information will provide more stock information than
requested.  Some code may rely upon your code only returning information
about the stocks that the caller requested.  As such, you should
never return information about stocks that were not requested, even
if you fetch and/or process that information.

2.6. Using your new module
--------------------------
Using your new module is easy.  Normally when using Finance::Quote you'd
do something like the following:

	use Finance::Quote;
	my $quoter = Finance::Quote->new();

To use your new module, simply specify the module name (without
the Finance::Quote prefix) in the new function.  Hence:

	use Finance::Quote;
	my $quoter = Finance::Quote->new("DodgyBank");

The DodgyBank methods will now be available:

	my %loaninfo = $quoter->fetch("dodgyloans","car","boat","house");
	my %fundinfo = $quoter->fetch("dodgyfunds","lotto","shares");

The resulting Finance::Quote object will also arrange for your functions
to be callable without using fetch.  This syntax is strongly discouraged,
as it results in pollution of the Finance::Quote namespace and provides
little advantages over the fetch() method:

	my %loaninfo = $quoter->dodgyloans("car","boat","loan");

This mainly exists to maintain compatibility with previous versions of
Finance::Quote.

3. How to contribute your module to the world.
==============================================
If you'd like others to use your module, then send a post to

	<finance-quote-devel@sourceforge.net> 

to get in touch with the other finance-quote developers and maintainers.
You can also submit your module using the patch manager at:

	http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=4232

4. How to find out more?
========================
The Finance::Quote webpage is located at:

	http://finance-quote.sourceforge.net/

You are welcome to make use of the tools at:

	http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=4232

5. How to join the mailing lists?
=================================

There are two mailing lists for Finance::Quote.  These can both be accessed
from:

	http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=4232