Getting NASDAQ and NYSE stock information into powerapps

[martinav]

I know this is complete vanity, but I want to add a my company's live stock price with up/down change into my app.  Is there a connector out there that will do that?  I was thinking it was in the MS Weather connector, but no go.

Any ideas?

[RusselThomas · Accepted solution]

Hi martinav, 

You can do this with a free  stock API like Alpha Vantage and creating a flow to collect the info for you.  You would need to play with various api suppliers and queries to find the one that suits your needs, but for this example I've used Alpha Vantage.  Please note that the stock price from this example may or may not be realtime depending on the API and the query you decide to use from that API - this example is really to show how you can easily leverage use a third-party API inside PowerApps and Flow. 

You could also create a custom connector in PowerApps, but that's a little more involved, so I've tried to keep this example as simple as possible for everyone.

First, create a free account and get your API key (https://www.alphavantage.co/)

I think the limitation here is 5 requests per minute, which is not bad for a free API.  If you want realtime you may have to pay for a service somewhere or use the intraday query with 1min intervals.  You'll need to read the API query options to decide - https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/

For this example I've just used the Quote Endpoint query.

Next, generate a query response by choosing the query you want, copying the URL they provide in their examples and pasting it into your browser - keep the response there for copying later.  I used this URL (with my own key) as an example to return a single intraday Microsoft share price; 

https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=GLOBAL_QUOTE&symbol=MSFT&apikey=demo

You can replace "demo" with your own key and the "MSFT" symbol with your own company stock symbol.  When you hit enter, you should get a page containing JSON looking something like this; 

{
    "Global Quote": {
        "01. symbol": "MSFT",
        "02. open": "111.8000",
        "03. high": "112.2100",
        "04. low": "110.9100",
        "05. price": "111.7500",
        "06. volume": "25644105",
        "07. latest trading day": "2018-11-08",
        "08. previous close": "111.9600",
        "09. change": "-0.2100",
        "10. change percent": "-0.1876%"
    }
}

Keep the page, we'll use it later.  Please also note the awesome Microsoft share price 😉 

For the next steps we'll use Flow - I'm going to have to assume you've played around with Flow a bit before otherwise this post will turn into a book :).

Create a new Flow from Blank then search for and select the standard PowerApps flow trigger as your starting point.

Add another step and search for the normal HTTP request action (little green globe icon).

Note:  For this example you will be transmitting your key in the URL parameters - you can specify HTTPS in the URI so it will be encrypted, but this still isn't always the most secure method for transmitting keys.  Considering the API is free anyway, the impact of someone stealing your key is neglible, so fine for this example but keep it in mind 🙂

On the HTTP request step;

• Set the Method input to GET
• Set the URI input to the same URL you used in your browser above 
• Leave the rest as is

Then add a Parse JSON action step to your flow and set the Content input to Body output of the HTTP step.  You can do this simply by clicking on the Content input of your Parse JSON step and selecting Body from under the HTTP step in the Dynamic Content list that pops up.

Click on the "Use sample payload schema" link under the Schema input to pop up another input dialogue.

Now go back to your browser where you initially put in the API query URL and got the JSON response - copy the response into the "Enter or paste a sample JSON payload." dialogue window.  Click Done.

Now add another step to your Flow and look for "Response" - select the one that is titled "Response" with "request" just below it.  the icon looks similar to the HTTP one, except it's more of a teal colour and has a small arrow coming into it.

In the Body input, select the Body output from the Parse JSON step by using the Dynamic Content list that pops up when you click in the input field. (Should be a purple icon)

Again, select the the "Use sample payload schema" under the Response Body JSON Schema field to pop up another input dialogue and paste the browser response content again, as you did for the previous step.

Give your Flow a name like "stockprice" and save it.

Your flow should look something like this;

Now go to PowerApps and insert a button - with the button selected, go to the Action menu and select Flows.  Select your "stockprice" flow.  It should insert the flow and insert the Run function into the OnSelect property of your button similar to the below; 

stockprice.Run(

Note: We aren't passing any parameters to flow because the URL is hardcoded to collect the MSFT stock price.  You can either change the URL parameter to your stock symbol in the Flow URL itself, or you can pass a stock symbol to the Flow from PowerApps and have it collect whatever stock you request - if you do that, you would include a "Ask in PowerApps" parameter to your flow as a variable to replace in the URL string and pass it inside these brackets.  You could also use the API to search for stock symbols inside PowerApps - but let's leave all that for a different post 🙂

Change the Onselect button property to the following; 

ClearCollect(collectStockPrices, stockprice.Run())

Run the app, click the button 🙂 

Now go into your collections menu and view your collectStockPrices collection - prepare to wait a few seconds after clicking the button to make sure Flow has had time to make the request and return it to PowerApps.  You should see a "Global Quote" column with a single row and a table icon - if you click through the table you should get to the Global Price table and this has a bunch of columns including the price and the change/movement from the previous.

To see it in your app, go back to your canvas page with the button and add a Text label.  
Set the Text property of the label to; 

First(collectStockPrices).'Global Quote'.'05. price'

The label should show your stock price.

You should be able to pick out what you want and display it how you want in your app from here 🙂

Hope this helps!

Kind regards,

RT

[martinav]

@RusselThomas,

Russel,

Much props for sharing this.  This is one of those things that 99% of folks would have NO WAY of figuring out on their own.  This worked most excellently, and on a very rare occasion, worked the FIRST time through!

Very well done, and thanks very much for this.

Regards,

Rod

[Ukiman1014]

Is there a way to pull the stock price on a schedule?  I get an error with the Response action stating it can't be used with a recurring trigger.

[martinav]

@Ukiman1014 ,

I have it trigger from PA when a user runs an app, and if he picks the "refresh" button.  

There is a limit to the number of calls a day, however.  I haven't exceeded it.  When I do, I will have the action push the data into a sharepoint item or something, and have it redo it on a schedule.  

You are using a schedule trigger action?  The response action only works with the PowerApps trigger.  If you want to use Schedule, where do you want the data to go?  If you want your powerapp to update on a schedule, you can put a timer or some logic with Now() in your app, and re-trigger the flow from the PA side on the schedule you wish.  Does that make sense?

Thinking about how I would do this, like every 15min, I would use the Schedule trigger, delete the Response action.

Then I would create an item in SP perhaps in the default documents folder, ans store the array text there every 15min or so.  Then, I would use PA to get the array string from the sharepoint item.  That would limit the hits to that URL if you have a lot of users.

[Ukiman1014]

@martinav 

Thanks for the tips!  I thought the Response action was necessary but it works fine without it, storing the fields in a SharePoint list.

I wanted to display our current stock price on the home page of our intranet in a web part, so I thought I'd just get the stock price in the background and then have the web part display the latest result (it doesn't need to be realtime).  I also thought I might be able to trigger some notifications based on the stock price.

Thanks again for your help!

[unislacker]

Hey

I tried to use your example for the below

https://www.alphavantage.co/query?function=TIME_SERIES_INTRADAY&symbol=IBM&interval=5min&outputsize=...

But it didn't work

If you can adapt and post here i would appropriate

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/JSON-API-to-Excel-Table/m-p/547015

Thanks

[Ukiman1014]

 FYI, Alpha Vantage now only gives the prior trading day's close with a free API key.  For realtime, they have partnered with another provider which charges a fee.

If anyone else knows of a free or cheap stock quote source (NYSE at least).  Please post it here! 🙂

[Airside1]

Just a thought  - I would try to use the Stocks function in Excel (choose a symbol and it should automatically add the right values: high, low etc.) and have this refresh and pull the data into PA. I’m not sure how “live” this is but it probably would work. 

[Ukiman1014]

Thanks Airside1, but I ended up going with data from Yahoo Finance via RapidAPI.  I'm using their free plan and therefore only pulling stock data every 20 minutes (while the NYSE is open).  I only pull a very small subset of all the data that's available and store it in a SharePoint list.  The List web part is pointed to a view that only shows the newest line in the list.  Seems to be working well.