financial graph

[random guy]

hi i am new to python and very new to GUI toolkits such as GTK and QT.

I am doing a simple financial program in python to teach myself. for part of it i plan on making a gui with a graph of stock prices. i havent decided on GTK or QT yet; they probably are both fine to most of my purposes. the main issue i think will be making a financial plot with candlesticks that is fast but good looking.

a search on google brings up lots of graphing libraries in python (mostly pyqt) but i am not sure which one would work for my task.

since i am doing this project to learn it kinda makes sense for me to use commonly used tools but it seems like most graph drawing libraries are developed by individuals.

i did see a nice one that uses a matlab style interface but i couldnt get it for arch linux anywhere.

anyway thanks for the advice.

btw it is hard to log into some websites like etrade even when using urllib

[CygnetGames]

The graphing library with a matlab-style interface that you saw was probably matplotlib. If you are used to making graphs in matlab then this is definitely the library to go for. The matplotlib gallery page shows the types of things that it can do.

They have a linux version - I'm not sure if it works on arch linux - I've never tried it.

Hope that helps.

[random guy]

hmm ok that seems good i guess. i think ill use qt4 for the window + buttons and matplotlib for the graph. Thanks for the advice.

[random guy]

oh wow matplotlib already has a function to download historical quotes between two dates using finance.yahoo.com. i wish i knew that before i wrote my own that used finance.google.com. but this is all about learning to use python well so i guess it is all good.

[CygnetGames]

Yeah, wow - matplotlib has loads of stuff but I didn't know it could do that - that's pretty cool.

And you're right - any learning is good.