# Online stock tickers in ascii?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/online-stock-tickers-in-ascii/233963>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 12, 2004, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/online-stock-tickers-in-ascii/233963 "2004-03-12T20:44:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![127.0.0.1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/258eb7/32.png) [@127.0.0.1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/127.0.0.1)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2004, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/online-stock-tickers-in-ascii/233963/1 "2004-03-12T20:44:26Z")

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A programming progect of mine requires a stream of stock prices for various stocks. Does anyone know if such a service exists online? Cheap/free services would be preferable, as I’m pretty broke.

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**Author:** ![Daver914](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)\
**Post date:** [March 13, 2004, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/online-stock-tickers-in-ascii/233963/2 "2004-03-13T07:24:19Z")

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There are plenty of free stock quote services that use SOAP. There is a good one here, at [Xmethods.net](http://www.xmethods.net/ve2/ViewListing.po;jsessionid=vdKboiTwb0paYoSqb_KKsxcV(QhxieSRM)?key=uuid:889A05A5-5C03-AD9B-D456-0E54A527EDEE).

I don’t know how familiar you are with SOAP, but it’s pretty easy to write a client for this service using Perl, PHP, Java, or whatever you need. The only caveat is that SOAP services (especially free ones like this) tend to be a little slow. You’d probably see a lag of 4 or 5 seconds to get the information.