Python-WebSocket Tutorial -Live Forex Rates

Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash

In this tutorial, I will show you how to write a program to retrieve real-time market data from TraderMade’s Forex API Market Data service. TraderMade offers real-time and historical Market Data for a large range of Forex, Metals and CFD’s.

Let’s get started -Setting up the environment

Before we start we need to get our environment ready, we will install the software required in 3 simple steps.

Setup

1. Setup Python
2. Install pip

Step 1. Install Python

Python 3.9.1 is the latest stable release and we recommend you use this where possible.

For Windows: 
You can download the windows installer from python.org or alternatively use the python app from the windows app store.
For Linux:
It's best to update apt-get before the install so run 
$sudo apt-get update 
$sudo apt-get install python3.9

Step 2. Install pip

For Windows:
pip is installed by defualt
For Linux:
$sudo apt-get install python3-pip

Now we can set up our project

Create a new dir that you wish to store your program in, I have created one called /webSocketTestClient.

Now we can install the libs we require, for this example, we only need to install one external lib and that is the WebSocket Client.

For Windows and Linux
pip install websocket_client

Let's write some code

Inside your directory create a new file testClient.py you can do this in your favorite editor or Notepad/VI if you are just getting started.

As this is a live WebSocket we want the program to continue to run whilst we have a live connection. For this, we use the thread class and the WebSocket run_forever() option.

Import the libs

import websocket
import time
try:
 import thread
except ImportError:
 import _thread as thread

For this example, we are just going to append the incoming data to a log file so we need to create the file handler.

f = open("webSocketTester.log", "a")

We also need to create the functions that will handle the callbacks from the WebSocket-Client class. These are standard handlers and will be the same for any WebSocket. For the TraderMade WebSocket on_open, we need to send back our login details these can be obtained by signing up for a free trial at marketdata.tradermade.com/signup

Signup for a free WebSocket trial

def on_message(ws, message):
    print(message)
    f.write("Live fx rates" + message  +  "\n" )
    f.flush()
def on_error(ws, error):
    print(error)
def on_close(ws):
    print("### closed ###")
def on_open(ws):
    def run(*args):
        ws.send("{\"userKey\":\"USER_KEY\", \"symbol\":\"GBPUSD\"}")
    thread.start_new_thread(run, ())

Now we have the logger and the handler we need to create the WebSocket, we will do this in the main function of the program.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    ws = websocket.WebSocketApp("wss://marketdata.tradermade.com/feed",
                              on_message = on_message,
                              on_error = on_error,
                              on_close = on_close)
    ws.on_open = on_open
    ws.run_forever()

Running the program

For Windows:
$python testClient.py
For Linux:
$sudo python3 testClient.py

and that is it you will now get Live fx rates in the log and also in your console.

Connected
Live fx rates GBPUSD 1.36897 1.36897 1.368970 20210208-10:31:32.156
Live fx rates GBPUSD 1.36897 1.36898 1.368975 20210208-10:31:32.502
Live fx rates GBPUSD 1.36897 1.36897 1.368970 20210208-10:31:32.757
Live fx rates GBPUSD 1.36904 1.36904 1.369040 20210208-10:31:33.057
Live fx rates GBPUSD 1.36904 1.36905 1.369045 20210208-10:31:33.948
Live fx rates GBPUSD 1.36904 1.36904 1.369040 20210208-10:31:34.860
Live fx rates GBPUSD 1.36904 1.36905 1.369045 20210208-10:31:35.156

Below is the full code but you can also download the code pre-populated with your user key from https://marketdata.tradermade.com/streaming-data-documentation#wsPython

import websocket
import time
try:
    import thread
except ImportError:
    import _thread as thread
f = open("webSocketTester.log", "a")
def on_message(ws, message):
    print(message)
    f.write(message  +  "\n" )
    f.flush()
def on_error(ws, error):
    print(error)
def on_close(ws):
    print("### closed ###")
def on_open(ws):
    def run(*args):
        ws.send("{\"userKey\":\"USER_KEY\", \"symbol\":\"GBPUSD\"}")
    thread.start_new_thread(run, ())
if __name__ == "__main__":
    ws = websocket.WebSocketApp("wss://marketdata.tradermade.com/feed",
                              on_message = on_message,
                              on_error = on_error,
                              on_close = on_close)
    ws.on_open = on_open
    ws.run_forever()

TraderMade works with companies and developers that demand real-time services and we are able to do that by using AWS (Amazon Web Services) as our data center partner, therefore clients can be assured of continued low-latency and high-frequency products and services.

How Can I Get More Information and Trial For Myself?

For more information contact sales@tradermade.com or Live Chat with a member of the team at https://tradermade.com/.

To trial immediately, just follow the Documentation on our Market Data website using this link https://marketdata.tradermade.com/signup