[GNC] AlphaVantage now restricting users to 25 quotes

[Bruce Schuck]

On 11/1/23 10:43 AM, Adrian Holbrook wrote:

> Thanks for that - I changed all mine to Yahoo as JSON and it works,
> as you say, for now. Wasn't long ago that I chenged them all from
> Yahhoo to Alphvantage! Bit of a chore with over 50 to do. Would be a
> very useful feature to be able to switch en masse from one provider
> to another rather than do them all individually.

I crafted some commands using XMLStarlet to manipulate quote sources en 
masse. Those using an SQL backend that are familiar with SQL queries can 
probably do the same. I can see why the GnuCash developers may be 
cautious about adding such a feature as there is a risk of corrupting 
users' data files if not careful. Just my $0.02.

> I did try using Alphvantage for 25 prices and Yahoo for the
> remaining ones but that ended up with the prices from Alphavantage
> being 100 times too high - I was very rich for a while! I suspect
> that one uses pence and the pther pounds (or cents and dollars) and
> Gnucash can only use one conversion. Would be interested to
> understand this a bit more.

There was a discussion on this some time back, it may have been on a 
Finance::Quote Github issue or pull request and not here. As you 
noticed, some LSE traded securities are priced in pounds, and others in 
pence. There are few others that are similar. The JSON returned when 
fetching data from AlphaVantage does not include an indicator for which 
currency is used. It *can* be looked up from AV using another API, and 
hence another hit on your API's daily counter. The workaround if one did 
not want to use another quote source is to add an additional ".X" the 
symbol used for the security. For example GBP.L data from AV is in Great 
Britain Pence. But if you set the symbol to GBP.L.X 
Finance::Quote::AlphaVantage will convert the close, high, low, open 
pricing to pounds.

There has been some work in the last year to fix or add a few quote 
sources. Fool, GoogleWeb, MarketWatch, YahooWeb, and YahooJSON were 
successfully tested when they were last updated within the last year.

Bruce S.