Getting Started with Alpaca Market Data
This is a quick guide on how to start consuming market data via APIs. Starting from beginning to end, this section outlines how to install Alpaca’s software development kit (SDK), create a free alpaca account, locate your API keys, and how to request both historical and real-time data.
Installing Alpaca’s Client SDK
In this guide, we’ll be making use of the SDKs provided by Alpaca. Alpaca maintains SDKs in four languages: Python, JavaScript, C#, and Go. Follow the steps in the installation guide below to install the SDK of your choice before proceeding to the next section.
pip install alpaca-py
npm install --save @alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api
dotnet add package Alpaca.Markets
go get -u github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-go/v2/alpaca
Generate API Keys
How to Request Market Data Through the SDK
With the SDK installed and our API keys ready, you can start requesting market data. Alpaca offers many options for both historical and real-time data, so to keep this guide succint, these examples are on obtaining historical and real-time bar data. Information on what other data is available can be found in the Market Data API reference.
To start using the SDK for historical data, import the SDK and instantiate the crypto historical data client. It’s not required for this client to pass in API keys or a paper URL.
from alpaca.data.historical import CryptoHistoricalDataClient
# No keys required for crypto data
client = CryptoHistoricalDataClient()
const Alpaca = require("@alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api");
dotnet new console -o MyApp -f net6.0
package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
"github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-go/v2/marketdata"
)
func main() {
}
Next we’ll define the parameters for our request. Import the request class for crypto bars, CryptoBarsRequest and TimeFrame class to access time frame units more easily. This example queries for historical daily bar data of Bitcoin in the first week of September 2022.
from alpaca.data.requests import CryptoBarsRequest
from alpaca.data.timeframe import TimeFrame
# Creating request object
request_params = CryptoBarsRequest(
symbol_or_symbols=["BTC/USD"],
timeframe=TimeFrame.Day,
start="2022-09-01",
end="2022-09-07"
)
Finally, send the request using the client’s built-in method, get_crypto_bars. Additionally, we’ll access the .df property which returns a pandas DataFrame of the response.
# Retrieve daily bars for Bitcoin in a DataFrame and printing it
btc_bars = client.get_crypto_bars(request_params)
# Convert to dataframe
btc_bars.df
const Alpaca = require("@alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api");
dotnet new console -o MyApp -f net6.0
package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
"github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-go/v2/marketdata"
)
func main() {
}
Returns
open high low close volume trade_count vwap
symbol timestamp
BTC/USD
2022-09-01 05:00:00+00:00 20049.0 20285.0 19555.0 20160.0 2396.3504 18060.0 19920.278135
2022-09-02 05:00:00+00:00 20159.0 20438.0 19746.0 19924.0 1688.0641 16730.0 20045.987764
2022-09-03 05:00:00+00:00 19924.0 19963.0 19661.0 19802.0 624.1013 9853.0 19794.111057
2022-09-04 05:00:00+00:00 19801.0 20060.0 19599.0 19892.0 1361.6668 8489.0 19885.445568
2022-09-05 05:00:00+00:00 19892.0 20173.0 19640.0 19762.0 2105.0539 11900.0 19814.853546
2022-09-06 05:00:00+00:00 19763.0 20025.0 18539.0 18720.0 3291.1657 19591.0 19272.505607
2022-09-07 05:00:00+00:00 18723.0 19459.0 18678.0 19351.0 2259.2351 16204.0 19123.487500
Updated 28 days ago