Arborbridge wrote:
For an ignoramus, could you explain the significance of API numbers 6-7-10 etc?
I understand that the API is the way HYPTUSS interfaces to the site as required (I think!) but why the different versions? And do they just lie dormant, or does HYPTUSS pick the one which works at the time? And how can you invent API-11, as someone suggested, when you don't know what changes will happen at the website
API stands for '
Application Programming Interface', and these are usually software interfaces that serve a specific function, and expect some sort of 'input' and will often then provide some sort of 'output'.
For many years HYPTUSS has been happily using the v6 Yahoo share-price API to gain free, almost-live share-price information, and until recently it's been running quite happily since the inception of the tool.
One of the best things about the v6 and v7 API interfaces was that part of the API process was being able to 'pass' the v6 and v7 API a single LIST of EPIC's in one go via the API URL, and the v6 or v7 API would then almost-instantly 'pass-back' an array of share-prices based on that initial EPIC list.
The long-term reliability and rapid speed of those multi-EPIC v6 and v7 API processes has been great to have publicly available for free, but sadly, that time has now come to an end with Yahoo closing down the v6 and v7 API processes at their end.
The v10 and v11 API Yahoo processes are currently still working, but they're a little different to the v6 and v7 API processes in that they will only expect a '
single EPIC transaction' being passed via the defined URL at any one time, although a side-benefit of that API change is that the returned JSON data, which is the format of data that's returned by the v10 and v11 API's, is much more verbose on a per-share basis, and can contain a wide variety of EPIC-specific information, such as share-price, dividend-yield, and lots more, as you can see if you open the v10 API link below for VODAFONE in a new browser tab -
https://query2.finance.yahoo.com/v10/finance/quoteSummary/vod.l?modules=price%2CfinancialData%2CsummaryDetailAs you can see if you open the above URL, the speed of returned v10 and v11 API data in JSON form for Vodafone is still really quick, and so even though we can only now use these later v10 and v11 API processes using a single EPIC at a time, it's still actually a quite rapid return of price-data even when looking at a fairly chunky number of individual holdings.
The question now is how long these v10 and v11 API processes will continue to be viable, and it's just a case of crossing our fingers a little on that front at the moment, but given the v6 and v7 API's had previously been running really reliably for over 10 years now, I've got to say we've had a good run already...
Cheers,
Itsallaguess