Finance::QuoteHist::MSN - Site-specific class for retrieving historical stock quotes.

  use Finance::QuoteHist::MSN;
  $q = Finance::QuoteHist::MSN->new
     (
      symbols    => [qw(IBM UPS AMZN)],
      start_date => '01/01/1999',
      end_date   => 'today',
     );

  foreach $row ($q->quotes()) {
    ($symbol, $date, $open, $high, $low, $close, $volume) = @$row;
    ...
  }

Finance::QuoteHist::MSN is a subclass of Finance::QuoteHist::Generic, specifically tailored to read historical quotes from the MSN financial web site (http://moneycentral.msn.com/). Note that Quotemedia is currently the site that provides historical quote data for such other sites as Silicon Investor, which was the target of a module in an earlier release of this distribution.

MSN does not currently provide information on dividends or splits.

Please see Finance::QuoteHist::Generic(3) for more details on usage and available methods. If you just want to get historical quotes and are not interested in the details of how it is done, check out Finance::QuoteHist(3).

The basic user interface consists of a single method, as shown in the example above. That method is:

quotes()

Returns a list of rows (or a reference to an array containing those rows, if in scalar context). Each row contains the Symbol, Date, Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume for that date. Quote values are pre-adjusted for this site.

Finance::QuoteHist::Generic

The data returned from these modules is in no way guaranteed, nor are the developers responsible in any way for how this data (or lack thereof) is used. The interface is based on URLs and page layouts that might change at any time. Even though these modules are designed to be adaptive under these circumstances, they will at some point probably be unable to retrieve data unless fixed or provided with new parameters. Furthermore, the data from these web sites is usually not even guaranteed by the web sites themselves, and oftentimes is acquired elsewhere.

Details for MSN's terms of use can be found here: http://privacy2.msn.com/tou/en-us/default.aspx

If you still have concerns, then use another site-specific historical quote instance, or none at all.

Above all, play nice.

Matthew P. Sisk, <sisk@mojotoad.com>

Copyright (c) 2006 Matthew P. Sisk. All rights reserved. All wrongs revenged. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Finance::QuoteHist::Generic(3), Finance::QuoteHist(3), perl(1).