Online Quotes

GnuCash can update your price database by fetching quotes online via the Perl module Finance::Quote.

Requirements

Perl

• Unix (Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX,...): You probably already have perl installed. Type perl -v on a command line to find out which version. If not use your package manager to install it.
• Mac OS X already has Perl installed. Open a Terminal application (in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder) and run perl -v to find out which version.
• Windows: <to be moved from Windows#Finance::Quote etc.>

Source: [1]

Finance::Quote

You need to install several Perl modules in order to get online quotes. While the error message may be about Finance::Quote not being installed properly, that module alone is not sufficient.

• You can check the version and the list of available modules by running

gnc-fq-check

from the command line. Update: In Feb 2014 Yahoo changed their URL. So F::Q 1.20 is required.

• If F::Q is missing or outdated, you need to install or update it. In general it can be done with

perl -MCPAN -e shell
 install Finance::Quote 

respective

 upgrade Finance::Quote

But there are easier ways dependend of your operating system:

FAQ#Q: How do I install Finance::Quote on a Mac?

Windows#Finance::Quote

FAQ#Q: How do I fix a system error when getting stock quotes?

Linux:

If there is no recent perl-finance-quote offered by your package manager do the following:

As root (su / sudo) run GnuCashs script

gnc-fq-update

It will install Finance::Quote and its dependencies.

• Some (Ubuntu based) distributions removed it from the package. In this case you can download it from github.

• In the first line replace @-PERL-@ with the path to your perl executable, e.g. /usr/bin/perl and mark the file as executable.

A discussion of how to set it up (in Ubuntu) can be found at [2].

That script, as of 2.4.0, uses CPAN to install:

• LWP
• Date::Manip
• HTML::Parser
• HTML::TableExtract
• Crypt::SSLeay
• Finance::Quote

Then read the instructions.

Warning About Open Files

Updating quotes will modify the GNUCash file/database. As multi-user access is not supported (as of 2.4), the file/database should be closed prior to updating quotes.

cron and Non-X Usage

If you attempt to run

gnucash --add-price-quotes /path/to/file.gnucash

without dbus running (for example, from a cron job or ssh without X forwarding), you may get errors such as

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon. 
See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. 
(Details -  1: Not running within active session)

One resolution for this, courtesy of SyncEvolution - The Missing Link, is to launch dbus for the duration of the quote retrieval with a cron command similar to

env `dbus-launch` sh -c 'trap "kill $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID" EXIT; gnucash --add-price-quotes /path/to/file.gnucash'

Note: This has been documented in Bug #639776

Technical Details

Where the files are stored depends on your OS/Distro:

• Linux depends on the way it was installed:
  • by package manager: /usr/share/perl5/[vendor/]Finance/Quote
  • by CPAN or gnc-fq-update: /usr/share/perl5/site/Finance/Quote
  • self compiled: /usr/local/share/perl/5.xx.x/Finance/Quote
• Windows: C:\Perl\site\lib\Finance\Quote

You can get the path also by running:

perldoc -lm Finance::Quote

(Tested on Linux. Please update for: MacOS, Windows)

Documentation

• Development Snapshot
• 2.6 Manual
• 2.4 Manual
• 2.2 Manual