fintech
hackathon 2013
Digging in to the Xignite
Financial Web Service APIs
Who are we?
- Financial Web Services since about 2006
- Emphasis on simplicity and ease of integration
- Began with SOAP and simple HTTP GET
- ..still REST Level 0 / XML-RPC model
- Supports SOAP, [non-SOAP] XML, JSON, CSV
What services?
- Security Master
- Funds and ETFS
- Equities
- Forex & Metals
- Commodities
- Fixed Income / Credit
- Indices / Markets
- Companies
- Splice
- Other stuff*
Languages w/ sample code
- C#
- Java
- Ruby
- PHP
- Perl
- VB.NET
- No samples, but suds seems to be leader for Python
- Easiest integration elsewhere is probably JSON
TECHNICAL DETAILS
- Append _token parameter for auth
- Auth also supported via cookie, IP
- Supports JSONP via _callback param
- _fields parameter allows filtering of output files
-
If using CSV serializer, add _flatten=true
HACKATHON ACCOUNT INFO
- _token = fintechhackathon2013
- Xignite website dynamically builds test URLs for you
- Just append your _token, if using HTTP GET endpoint
- Website credentials
- Username: info@fintechhack.com
- Password: fintechhackathon2013
- Not really needed, but easier for discovery / research
Best Practices
- Most things return 2xx or 5xx
- In-API status:
- Success [Great!]
- RegistrationError [Retry won't help]
- RequestError [Probably asking for the wrong thing]
- SystemError [Retry very well may succeed]
- plz with exponential backoff
Best practices (cont'd)
- Still over the public web
- ..so use low-integerial # of retries
- Circuit Breaker pattern!
- SSL/TLS, if desired
- Cache results for frequent requests or ref data queries
Fabulous prizes
Xignite will be awarding a $500
gift certificate to Amazon.com to the
best app/widget utilizing our APIs!
Ideas:
- Data viz
- Analytics
- Bonds
- Multiple instrument types
Questions?
mbollinger@xignite.com
@slpsys