YQL is the way to get information from Web Services using SQL-like queries. It also provides us a console where we can test our queries and generate the REST query. To see how it works, just go to the console page, and enter the following as the YQL statement:

And set the output to either “XML” or “JSON”, and click “Test”. I personally prefer JSON and will continue to use JSON throughout the example. I unchecked the “Diagnostics” and emptied the text field next to “JSON”.

The command will fetch the information related to the stock quote FFIV (F5 Networks, NASDAQ) from Yahoo Finance. Inside “Formatted View” window, you will see the result like this:

{
 'query': {
  'count': '1',
  'created': '2010-07-22T04:59:35Z',
  'lang': 'en-US',
  'results': {
   'quote': {
    'symbol': 'FFIV',
    'Ask': '80.00',
    'AverageDailyVolume': '1699250',
    'Bid': '77.63',
    'AskRealtime': '80.00',
    'BidRealtime': '77.63',
    'BookValue': '11.167',
    'Change_PercentChange': '-3.68 - -4.79%',
    'Change': '-3.68',
    'Commission': null,
    'ChangeRealtime': '-3.68',
    'AfterHoursChangeRealtime': 'N/A - N/A',
    'DividendShare': '0.00',
    'LastTradeDate': '7/21/2010',
    'TradeDate': null,
    'EarningsShare': '1.412',
    'ErrorIndicationreturnedforsymbolchangedinvalid': 'N/A',
    'EPSEstimateCurrentYear': '2.29',
    'EPSEstimateNextYear': '2.71',
    'EPSEstimateNextQuarter': '0.62',
    'DaysLow': '72.48',
    'DaysHigh': '77.74',
    'YearLow': '33.43',
    'YearHigh': '79.21',
    'HoldingsGainPercent': '- - -',
    'AnnualizedGain': '-',
    'HoldingsGain': null,
    'HoldingsGainPercentRealtime': 'N/A - N/A',
    'HoldingsGainRealtime': null,
    'MoreInfo': 'cnsprmiIed',
    'OrderBookRealtime': 'N/A',
    'MarketCapitalization': '5.859B',
    'MarketCapRealtime': null,
    'EBITDA': '188.9M',
    'ChangeFromYearLow': '+39.68',
    'PercentChangeFromYearLow': '+118.70%',
    'LastTradeRealtimeWithTime': 'N/A - <b>73.11</b>',
    'ChangePercentRealtime': 'N/A - -4.79%',
    'ChangeFromYearHigh': '-6.10',
    'PercebtChangeFromYearHigh': '-7.70%',
    'LastTradeWithTime': 'Jul 21 - <b>73.11</b>',
    'LastTradePriceOnly': '73.11',
    'HighLimit': null,
    'LowLimit': null,
    'DaysRange': '72.48 - 77.74',
    'DaysRangeRealtime': 'N/A - N/A',
    'FiftydayMovingAverage': '72.3831',
    'TwoHundreddayMovingAverage': '63.8515',
    'ChangeFromTwoHundreddayMovingAverage': '+9.2585',
    'PercentChangeFromTwoHundreddayMovingAverage': '+14.50%',
    'ChangeFromFiftydayMovingAverage': '+0.7269',
    'PercentChangeFromFiftydayMovingAverage': '+1.00%',
    'Name': 'F5 Networks, Inc.',
    'Notes': '-',
    'Open': null,
    'PreviousClose': '76.79',
    'PricePaid': null,
    'ChangeinPercent': '-4.79%',
    'PriceSales': '8.42',
    'PriceBook': '6.88',
    'ExDividendDate': 'N/A',
    'PERatio': '54.38',
    'DividendPayDate': 'N/A',
    'PERatioRealtime': null,
    'PEGRatio': '1.65',
    'PriceEPSEstimateCurrentYear': '33.53',
    'PriceEPSEstimateNextYear': '28.34',
    'Symbol': 'FFIV',
    'SharesOwned': null,
    'ShortRatio': '3.60',
    'LastTradeTime': '4:00pm',
    'TickerTrend': ' -===== ',
    'OneyrTargetPrice': '75.11',
    'Volume': '3213004',
    'HoldingsValue': null,
    'HoldingsValueRealtime': null,
    'YearRange': '33.43 - 79.21',
    'DaysValueChange': '- - -4.79%',
    'DaysValueChangeRealtime': 'N/A - N/A',
    'StockExchange': 'NasdaqNM',
    'DividendYield': null,
    'PercentChange': '-4.79%'
   }
  }
 }
}

Below that text field, we can find the REST statement which we can use to send query to the server. It looks like this for our query:

http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20where%20symbol%3D'FFIV'%0A%09%09&format=json&env=http%3A%2F%2Fdatatables.org%2Falltables.env&callback=

This is how we can fetch stock information using YQL and receive information in JSON. Since this is a public data, we can directly send the REST, otherwise we need the API keys to access the data.

Let’s see how we can fetch the information via Python.

>>> import urllib2
>>> result = urllib2.urlopen('http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20where%20symbol%3D'FFIV'%0A%09%09&format=json&env=http%3A%2F%2Fdatatables.org%2Falltables.env&callback=').read()
>>>  print result.read()

That should print the whole JSON response. We can use simplejson module to parse the result. It looks like this:

>>> import simplejson
>>> data = simplejson.loads(result.read())
>>> data['query']['results']['quote']['LastTradePriceOnly']
'2.35'

The python statements are pretty much self-explanatory.

Here’s another example from Yahoo, to get stock information from open data tables.

http://www.yqlblog.net/blog/2009/06/02/getting-stock-information-with-yql-and-open-data-tables/