Download NSE & BSE Bhavcopies in Python using Click

2018/01/16TechnicalPython

One of the key selling points of Python is ability to create command line script that have ability to automate some mundane tasks. Bhav Copies are equivalent to data feeds we get from exchanges. We wanted to demonstrate power of simple scripts, so we chose

What are Bhav Copies?

For complete code review this python script, the heart of the code is listed as below:

@click.command()
@click.argument(
    "exchange",
    default="nse")
@click.option(
    "--for_date",
    default=yesterday(),
    help="Date for which to download bhavcopy DD/MM/YYYY format")
@click.option(
    "--for_past_days",
    default=1,
    help="Number of calendar days for which we need to fetch data {E.g. past 15 days from today}")
def main(exchange, for_date, for_past_days):
    """
    download_bhavcopy is utility that will download daily bhav copies
    from NSE and BSE

    Examples:
    python download_bhavcopy.py bse --for_date 06/12/2017

    python download_bhavcopy.py bse --for_past_days 15
    """
    click.echo(f"downloading bhavcopy {exchange}")

    # We need to fetch data for past X days
    if for_past_days != 1:
        for i in range(for_past_days):
            ts = datetime.now() - timedelta(days=i+1)
            ts = ts.strftime("%d/%m/%Y")
            if exchange == "nse":
                download_nse_bhavcopy(ts)
            else:
                download_bse_bhavcopy(ts)
    else:
        if exchange == "nse":
            download_nse_bhavcopy(for_date)
        else:
            download_bse_bhavcopy(for_date)

Key things to note:

You can take any python function and decorate it with @click.command to make it behave like a command line interface. What this means is you get --help flag out of the box.
Click has two key concepts around parameters going into main function here:
1. Argument: These are mandatory. Look at how we’ve made exchange a mandatory parameter
2. Options: These are parameters/switch that can or cannot be present. Both for_date and for_days are example of optional arguments
The document string that you write below the function that you’ve decorated using @click.command will be printed when you invoke the command with --help flag. We believe this is one of the most awesome features
With optional arguments you can specify help which also produces nicer output
You can also use default argument in @click.option decorator to specify default values. This is also used to infer data-type of argument. Thus we don’t need to do all parsing and validation.
Click also has Sub Commands this make grouping and implementing sub-commands real easy

(click_demo) Sidharths-MacBook-Pro-3:click sidharthshah$ python download_bhavcopy.py --help
Usage: download_bhavcopy.py [OPTIONS] [EXCHANGE]

  download_bhavcopy is utility that will download daily bhav copies from NSE
  and BSE

  Examples: python download_bhavcopy.py bse --for_date 06/12/2017

  python download_bhavcopy.py bse --for_past_days 15

Options:
  --for_date TEXT          Date for which to download bhavcopy DD/MM/YYYY
                           format
  --for_past_days INTEGER  Number of calendar days for which we need to fetch
                           data {E.g. past 15 days from today}
  --help                   Show this message and exit.

For reference you can look at Awesome Screencast on YouTube and Official Documentation