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 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 - otherwise Yahoo will not work.

Update for version: 3.8.2 - this bundles the Python module 'requests' and dependencies so users only using 'FT' as source should not require anything else.

Everyone else using 'Yahoo' as source needs to install module 'curl_cffi'.

Install Python curl_cffi module as root (such that LibroOffice can find it)

• Optionally, if you don't have pip3 installed: sudo apt install python3-pip

• Then sudo pip3 install curl_cffi --upgrade

Note: For a normal Python script just installing curl_cffi is enough to bypass Yahoo's HTTPS fingerprinting. Because LibreOffice on Linux is loading the stock curl library long before executing the extension code directly, a second step are required.

The second bit requires a download of curl-impersonate e.g. (currently) libcurl-impersonate-v0.6.1.x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz - unpack it somewhere

Then I used the below (adjust your location of libcurl-impersonate-chrome.so) to run LibreOffice Calc directly from command line - alternatively you could define/export LD_PRELOAD and CURL_IMPERSONATE e.g. in /etc/environment or ~/.bashrc - but make sure the variables are really set when you run LibreOffice. Note: the setting chrome101 is just that - a setting on what browser to "impersonate". You don't need to use or install Chrome for this.

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

In LibreOffice Calc this I can see something like 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"

• 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

• Add a new user environment variable CURL_IMPERSONATE, setting it to value chrome101, the Linux LD_PRELOAD is not needed for the LibreOffice 7.1 I tested this with.

Under 'Releases' on GitHub 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 same Release area 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.

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.

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.

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.

I only ever tried building on a Linux box.

You need to install LibreOffice SDK packages: libreoffice-dev libreoffice-java-common libreoffice-script-provider-python Since the Yahoo HTTPS fingerprinting issue, additionally curl_cffi needs to be installed (see beginning of README)

# depending on your location...

cd ~/tech/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

• 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