This is a Python based extension for LibreOffice Calc to make market data available in Calc spreadsheets - currently supporting Yahoo's (FX, crypto, equities, indices, futures, options) and Financial Times' (FX, equities, indices, futures) websites using old-fashioned web scraping.

Latest version vs Yahoo HTTPS fingerprinting

Latest version 3.8.0 was created to bypass Yahoo's recently adding crazy HTTPS fingerprinting to their website. In a step back to before or rather a return to times long gone some Python modules need to be installed such that LibreOffice can find them.

Ideally install module 'curl_cffi' (although 'requests' works as well if you don't intend to use Yahoo as source) using e.g. on my Ubuntu:

sudo pip3 install curl_cffi --upgrade

Previously this worked on Windows - as LibreOffice on Windows ships with its own, minimal Python runtime a few more steps are required:

Download the script https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py to your computer
Start a Command Prompt (CMD) as Administrator on the command prompt run (change path as required)

"c:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\python.exe" c:\temp\get-pip.py and then

"c:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\python.exe" -m pip install curl_cffi --upgrade

If you want to use Yahoo as a source you need to download latest binary of curl-impersonate e.g. libcurl-impersonate-v0.6.1.x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz and untar it somewhere

Now some of these bits need to be loaded/initialised before running LibreOffice: I used the below (adjust your location to libcurl-impersonate-chrome.so) to run LibreOffice Calc directly from command line:

LD_PRELOAD=/tmp/curl-impersonate/libcurl-impersonate-chrome.so CURL_IMPERSONATE=chrome101 /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin --calc

With this I can see the below in the output from =GETREALTIME("SUPPORT") and the examples.ods file from this repo can load data for Yahoo again.

...
requests=curl_cffi_0.10.0
LD_PRELOAD=/tmp/curl-impersonate/libcurl-impersonate-chrome.so
CURL_IMPERSONATE=chrome101
curl_version="libcurl/8.1.1 BoringSSL zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.9 nghttp2/1.56.0"

Similar things should be possible on Windows - let me know if this is helpful and share your experience.

Background: for a normal Python script just installing curl_cffi is enough to bypass Yahoo's HTTPS fingerprinting. Because LibreOffice is loading the stock curl library before executing the extension code directly, the above hack is required. Unless someone tells me otherwise...

Feedback requested:

Please provide feedback about using the extension here

Usage:

Under 'Releases' on GitHub there is a downloadable Financials-Extension.oxt file - load it into Calc under menu item: Tools, Extension Manager...

Please make sure, not to rename the OXT file when downloading and before installing: LO will mess up the installation otherwise and the extension won't work.

Getting data should be as simple as having this in a cell:

=GETREALTIME("IBM",21,"YAHOO")
=GETREALTIME("IBM:NYQ",21,"FT")
=GETREALTIME("EURUSD","LAST_PRICE","FT")
=GETHISTORIC("IBM",90,"2020-12-01","YAHOO")
=GETREALTIME("ETH-USD","LAST_PRICE","COINBASE")

Codes 21 and 90 stand for "last price" and "close" (see below), respectively. Only Yahoo has historic data available.

There is a file examples.ods in the Release area too with usage examples and possible arguments to functions.

You have to check the respective websites to work out what symbol is the right one for you. Make sure today or the date requested is a trading day (exchange is not closed). If a website doesn't have the symbol/asset you want, this extension can't help you either. Having said that, I mostly look at US and West European equities, ETFs and mutual funds and major FX rates - if you have issues with the data available for other assets or assets in other regions, drop me a line (best to include full URLs and possibly the same asset listed on more than one site for comparison). While data for last price is most likely consistent across sites, they may differ for other data points.

List of example URLs for checking symbols. You can start from these and search for other symbols. If you think some data is available on the website but not from the extension, a good place to start when raising an issue is to include a similar URL to compare results.

Website	Symbol	Example URL for Vodafone Group Plc UK
YAHOO	VOD.L	https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VOD.L
FT	VOD:LSE	https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/summary?s=VOD:LSE
COINBASE	ETH-EUR	https://api.exchange.coinbase.com/products/ETH-EUR/stats

LibreOffice: using , (comma) vs ; (semicolon) to separate arguments in formula

There is a setting in "Tools" / "Options..." / "LibreOffice Calc" / "Formula" called "Functions". Here the user can specify the character used to separate arguments in formula.

Mine is set to , (comma) - when I enter ; (semicolon) in a formula (Ubuntu / UK English), no error is reported but the semicolon is converted to , (comma)

Depending on your system's language and default LibreOffice settings, you maybe better off using ; instead of , in your formulas.

List of supported data points

You can either specify numbers or names (lower or upper case) - not all bits are available from all sources, and they are not necessarily consistent across sources either.

Name	Code	YAHOO	FT	YAHOO (historic)	COINBASE	Notes
PREV_CLOSE	5	Yes	Yes
OPEN	6	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
CHANGE	7	Yes	Yes
LAST_PRICE_DATE	8		Yes			yyyy-mm-dd
LAST_PRICE_TIME	10		Yes
CHANGE_IN_PERCENT	11	Yes	Yes
LOW	14	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
HIGH	16	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
LAST_PRICE	21	Yes	Yes		Yes
BID	22	Yes	Yes
ASK	25	Yes	Yes
HIGH_52_WEEK	24	Yes	Yes
LOW_52_WEEK	26	Yes	Yes
MARKET_CAP	27	Yes	Yes
BIDSIZE	30	Yes	Yes
ASKSIZE	31	Yes	Yes
VOLUME	35	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
AVG_DAILY_VOL_3MONTH	39	Yes	Yes
BETA	67	Yes	Yes
EPS	68	Yes	Yes
PE_RATIO	69	Yes	Yes
DIV	70	Yes	Yes
DIV_YIELD	71	Yes	Yes
EX_DIV_DATE	72	Yes	Yes			yyyy-mm-dd
PAYOUT_RATIO	73	Yes	No
EXPIRY_DATE	74	Yes (on options)	No			yyyy-mm-dd
SHARES_OUT	75	Yes	Yes
FREE_FLOAT	76	Yes	Yes
SETTLEMENT_DATE	77	Yes (on futures)				yyyy-mm-dd
CLOSE	90	No	No	Yes
ADJ_CLOSE	91	No	No	Yes
SECTOR	98	Yes	Yes
INDUSTRY	99	Yes	Yes
TICKER	101	Yes	Yes		Yes
EXCHANGE	102	Yes	No
CURRENCY	103	Yes	Yes		Yes
NAME	104	Yes	Yes
TIMEZONE	105	Yes	Yes

Dealing with missing data:

A hint for using LibreCalc: if you want to refresh data you can press SHIFT-CTRL-F9 - this will force a recalculation of all formulas in all sheets.

Secondly the extension saves some debug information under your user directory in a directory ".financials-extension": the HTML for each stock symbol is saved in a separate file (depending on the source and ticker symbol). You can open it your favorite web browser (or other tools) to check if the page actually contained the information you are looking for. If it does, the file trace.log has a record of all calls to the extension with the value returned to LibreOffice. Otherwise, the file extension.log in the same location might have more details about errors or exceptions.

In general, web scraping can't be compared to using a stable API - the websites might have issues - from a technical or data perspective. I have found especially on the weekend it can sometimes be "flaky" and closing/reopening LibreCalc can refresh things.

Build:

You will need the LibreOffice SDK installed.

On my system (Ubuntu) I installed packages: libreoffice-dev libreoffice-java-common libreoffice-script-provider-python

# depending on your location...

cd ~/tech/IdeaProjects/Financials-Extension/

# Assuming curl-cffi is installed, LD_PRELOAD is not required here

CURL_IMPERSONATE=chrome101 python3 -m unittest discover src

# This builds file Financials-Extension.oxt

./compile.sh

Tested with:

Ubuntu 22.04.5 / LibreOffice Calc 7.3.7.2 / Python 3.10.12

(Previously)

Windows 10 / LibreOffice Calc 7.1.2.2 / Python 3.8.8
MacOS 10.15.7 / LibreOffice Calc 7.2.0.4 / Python 3.8.10
Debian 10.3 / LibreOffice Calc 6.1.5.2 / Python 3.7.3
Ubuntu 20.04.5 / LibreOffice Calc 6.4.7.2 / Python 3.8.10