I'm currently seeking a different solution to getting the description for stock symbols in Ninjatrader 8. The Yahoo finance api is no longer working so I'm trying to come up with a different solution to get the symbol descriptions for stocks. The vast majority of stock symbols do not have a description for them in the instrument file. It is too time consuming to enter them manually. I recently found that I could actually write the description through the indicator to the instrument file. If the description field was blank in the instrument file, the indicator would download the description from Yahoo finance and then it would write the description in the file so the description would only get pulled from Yahoo finance once. I am wondering if anyone knows how I can get the description for stock symbols from either my Kinetick feed or my Interactive brokers feed? Or any other solution would be welcome.

Thanks, Jeffrey.

Example of how I got the description before.

baseURL = "https://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s="+lookup;

using(WebClient client = new WebClient())
{
mytext = "";
symbolname = Regex.Replace(client.DownloadString(baseURL+"&f=s") , @"[^\w\&.@-]", "");
symboldescription = Regex.Replace(client.DownloadString(baseURL+"&f=n") , @"[^\w \&.@-]", "");
mytext = symbolname+" - "+symboldescription;

}

On the IQFeed symbol guide website, there exists a TAB delimited file with symbols and names
maybe that can help you ?

@rleplae Thanks

I downloaded the file and first stripped out all but the equity symbols. Then stripped out the ones with no description. Still left 24248 stock symbols with descriptions.

I'll see if I can make this work.

The attached indicator uses a text look up file to find the description or stock symbols when the description in the Ninja database is blank. It also has the option to overwrite the description even if it's not blank. So by placing this on a chart as you change from symbol to symbol it will update the description.

One of the drawbacks of using the look up file is that unless you're constantly updating the file, new stock symbols or changed stock symbols descriptions will not get updated.

You can extract the symbol description lookup file and place it in any folder you wish all you have to do is set the path and file name in the indicator.



If you're using another indicator to display the stock symbol description but you would like to use this to update the database, un-check Visible in this indicator properties and it will still update the database even if it's not displaying.




As I write very little code suggestions for improvements would be appreciated.