How to create a stock quote fetching app in python

Question

I\'m quite new to programming in Python.

I want to make an application which will fetch stock prices from google finance. One exam

Answer 1

import urllib
import re

def get_quote(symbol):
    base_url = 'http://finance.google.com/finance?q='
    content = urllib.urlopen(base_url + symbol).read()
    m = re.search('id="ref_(.*?)">(.*?)<', content)
    if m:
        quote = m.group(2)
    else:
        quote = 'no quote available for: ' + symbol
    return quote

I find that if you use ref_(.*?) and use m.group(2) you will get a better result as the reference id changes from stock to stock.