.. link: http://dgplug.org/summertraining/2013/posts/iowabeakster-sharevalue-20130712-005534.html
.. description: 
.. tags: 
.. date: 2013/07/12 00:55:35
.. title: iowabeakster sharevalue 20130712-005534
.. slug: iowabeakster-sharevalue-20130712-005534

sharevalue
==========

basic functions of script
-------------------------

- import necessary modules
- take stock ticker symbol as a command line argument
- make several evaluative conditions to ensure proper arguments are used
- attempt to retrieve quotes
- give another waning if quote returned has no value (likely not a valid symbol)
- display quote

link
----
`Github Link <https://github.com/iowabeakster/summertraining_test_repo/blob/master/sharevalue/sharevalue.py>`_


script code
-----------

.. code:: python

 #!/usr/bin/env python


 import urllib2
 import sys


 # a series of command line checks for sanity
 # check to make sure an arg is given for the ticker symbol
 if len(sys.argv) < 2:
     print "Come on dude, I need a ticker symbol to look up"
     print "For example,  $ ./sharevalue GOOG"  
     print "Try it again."
     sys.exit(1)

 # check to make sure only one symbol is given
 elif len(sys.argv) > 2:
     print "Please just give me one ticker symbol to look up"
     print "For example,  $ ./sharevalue GOOG"
     print "Try it again."
     sys.exit(1)

 # set ticker symbol argv[1] to variable s for easier usage
 s = sys.argv[1]   
    
 # check to see if arg is alphanumeric
 if s.isalnum() == False:
     print "Oh come on man! this isn't that hard"
     print "For example,  $ ./sharevalue GOOG"
     print "It must be alphanumeric, try again."
     sys.exit(1)

 # check to see if arg is less that 5 characters
 elif len(s) > 4:
     print "Don't you know?"
     print "A ticker symbol is not more than 4 characters in length."
     print "For example,  $ ./sharevalue GOOG"
     sys.exit(1)
    
 # pass the ticker symbol to the url string
 ticker_name = ('http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=%s&f=l1'
     % sys.argv[1])

 # go get the stock quote and cast the returned data to a string and float
 get_quote = urllib2.urlopen(ticker_name)
 q = get_quote.read()
 float(q)

 # determine if it was an actual quote
 if float(q) < 0.001:
     print "Whoa, either that is a real dog of stock,"
     print "or you still need to enter a vaild ticker symbol."
     print "To see the quote for Google try $ ./sharevalue goog"
     sys.exit(1)
     
 # display the quote    
 else:
     print q