In this paper, we will download historical NYSE quotes from Yahoo TechTicker.
Yahoo Finance offers a free service that allows you to retrieve historical quote on any NYSE ticker in an easy to use csv format.
its url is (and you can try it): http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv?s=MSFT

Nothing fancy here, No SOAP, no XML, just a plain downlood of csv data and it is just a useful web service.
It has a few parameters, but the only one that is required is the ticker symbol: s is the ticker symbol.
There are also other parameters (start and end date, frequency...), but it would not be useful to detail them here.
All this interface information is public, you see it in the web browser's url bar when you request historical quotes from their website.

Because it is so simple, it can all be quickly used in HTML, you don't even need a server, your browser does that for you.

But using a web browser is not automatic, so some questions need another answer, for example

• How do I download the quotes for the whole Fortune 500 without spending my day clicking and saving files?

SHEEP's HttpGetClient allows you to automate your downloads Free HttpGetClient download.

Let us see how we do that with four downloads and I will let you generalize on your own time.
For personal reasons, I am very fond of Johnson and Johnson (JNJ), Pfizer (PFE), Pernod-Ricard (PER.F) and Yahoo (YHOO), so I will use them and download all their quotes from the beginning of 2008.

import com.compomentis.httpgetclient.HttpGetClient;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Vector;


public class TickerImport
{
    Vector tickers = null;
    HttpGetClient httpGetClient = null;
    
    /** Creates a new instance of TickerImport */
    public TickerImport()
    {
        tickers = new Vector();
    }
    
    public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException
    {
        TickerImport tickerImport = new TickerImport();
        tickerImport.getTickers();
        tickerImport.createClient();
        tickerImport.run();
        
    }
    
    void getTickers()
    {
        // Here I hard-coded a list, you may want to do something more elegant
        // What about getting it from a file, a database or even use HttpGetClient to get it from a web service?
        tickers.add("PFE");
        tickers.add("JNJ");
        tickers.add("YHOO");
        tickers.add("PER.F");
    }
    
    void createClient() throws IOException
    {
        httpGetClient = new HttpGetClient();
    }
    
    void run() throws IOException
    {
        for(int i=0; i < tickers.size(); i++)
        {
            String tickerId = (String) tickers.get(i);
            prepareRequest(tickerId);
            httpGetClient.run();
            File responseFile = new File(httpGetClient.getResponseFile());
            File betterFile = new File(responseFile.getParentFile(), tickerId + ".csv");
            responseFile.renameTo(betterFile);
        }
    }
    
    void prepareRequest(String tickerId) throws IOException
    {
        httpGetClient.setUrl("http://ichart.finance.yahoo.com/table.csv");
        httpGetClient.clearFields();
        httpGetClient.setField("a","00"); // January
        httpGetClient.setField("b","1");  // The first
        httpGetClient.setField("c","2008");  // 2008
        httpGetClient.setField("s", tickerId);
    }

}