Mutual fund security code

[Linas Vepstas]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2002 at 12:33:36PM -0600, Glen Ditchfield was heard to remark:
> On January 8, 2002 10:12 am, I wrote:
> > Do mutual funds have security codes?  How do I find out what they are?
> 
> The answers seem to be "no, not really" and "it depends".  The "security 
> code" is actually "whatever identifier the price quote source's 
> Finance::Quote module needs", and you find them by reading the module's man 
> page, or the module source itself, to see what it wants.
> 
> For instance, 'AGF Canadian Aggressive All-Cap Fund' has security code 1726 
> on fundlibrary.com, and to find this out you search the web site for the fund 
> -- I had to read the Perl to find the right page -- and read '1726' in the 
> URL's query string.  On the other hand, a hypothetical Finance::Quote module 
> that went straight to the AGF.com site would probably use the fund name as 
> the security code, and extract a price from 
> www.agf.com/pp001/pp002/pp002.html.
> 
> For another instance, to get security codes for TD Waterhouse, you download a 
> comma-separated-values file, and read the code from column 1.  TD Waterhouse 
> and fundlibrary don't use the same codes.
> 
> Frankly, I can't imagine my father-in-law doing this.

Hmm, maybe we should start a CDDB-like service for fund ID's.  

I could run a little database on www.gnucash.org that contained a
smattering of fund names and ID numbers.   It shouldn't be hard to write
the extension to gnucash to query the server for an ID, given the fund
name.  Say something like the following screenshot:

    You asked for 'AGF Canadian Aggressive'.  
    Did you mean 'AGF Canadian Aggressive All-Cap Fund', 
    fund number 1726 on www.agf.com, 
    recent price is $CAD 42.42?
           ()yes () no

If there's a list of more than one match, then there might be several
choices displayed.

==============

But of course, for this to work, we need lots of good data in the
database.  And for that, we need feedback.  After a user has set things
up, and has verified that they're getting good prices back, they could
hit a 'send-to' button, and have the association emailed into the
www.gnucash.org fund-id server.  Given the tens of thousands or more
of gnucash users, the database shoulf fill up pretty quick.

Anyone care to write the code to do this ??

--linas


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