Exchange Rates API

Exchange rates API is a free service for current and historical foreign exchange rates published by the European Central Bank.

Usage

Lates & specific date rates

Get the latest foreign exchange rates.

GET /latest

Get historical rates for any day since 1999.

GET /2018-03-26

Rates are quoted against the Euro by default. Quote against a different currency by setting the base parameter in your request.

GET /latest?base=USD

Request specific exchange rates by setting the symbols parameter.

GET /latest?symbols=USD,GBP

Rates history

Get historical rates for a time period.

GET /history?start_at=2018-01-01&end_at=2018-09-01

Limit results to specific exchange rates to save bandwidth with the symbols parameter.

GET /history?start_at=2018-01-01&end_at=2018-09-01&symbols=ILS,JPY

Quote the historical rates against a different currency.

GET /history?start_at=2018-01-01&end_at=2018-09-01&base=USD

Client side usage

The primary use case is client side. For instance, with money.js in the browser

let demo = () => {
  let rate = fx(1).from("GBP").to("USD")
  alert("£1 = $" + rate.toFixed(4))
}

fetch('https://api.exchangeratesapi.io/latest')
  .then((resp) => resp.json())
  .then((data) => fx.rates = data.rates)
  .then(demo)

Stack

Exchange rates API is built upon Sanic to achieve high throughput. The current setup can asyncronously handle thousands of requests per second.

Libraries used

• Sanic
• GINO
• asyncpg
• requests
• APScheduler
• uvloop
• ultraJSON

Deployment

Virtualenv

pipenv shell

Install packages

pipenv install

Load in initial data & Scheduler

The scheduler will keep your database up to date hourly with information from European Central bank. It will download the last 90 days worth of data every hour.

The reference rates are usually updated around 16:00 CET on every working day, except on TARGET closing days. They are based on a regular daily concertation procedure between central banks across Europe, which normally takes place at 14:15 CET.

On initialization it will check the database. If it's empty all the historic rates will be downloaded and records created in the database.

Development

gunicorn exchangerates.app:app --worker-class sanic.worker.GunicornWorker --reload

Contributing

Thanks for your interest in the project! All pull requests are welcome from developers of all skill levels. To get started, simply fork the master branch on GitHub to your personal account and then clone the fork into your development environment.

Madis Väin (madisvain on Github, Twitter) is the original creator of the Exchange Rates API framework.

License

MIT