Finance widgets
From SpinetiX Support Wiki
This page is about the finance data-driven widgets included into Elementi 2016 and later.
Introduction
A simple exchange rate info can perk up any screen timely and precisely. But then, a wide range of custom options choosing the targeted market data and way to display it makes a real financial dashboard.
Finance widgets enable users to automatically display financial data such as exchange rate, market data, etc. The data is provided by third-party financial providers: Alpha Vantage and European Central Bank and therefore falls under their respective terms and conditions.
Getting started
Getting started is easy; download Elementi software, launch it and create away! Just follow the 4 quick steps below:
- Get Elementi.
- Open Elementi and on the main window, click on the "Widgets" tab.
- Scroll down and open the "Finance" folder. Pick a widget.
- Include that widget into your content and configure it.
Finance widgets
Elementi software comes with several finance widgets accessible from "Widgets" tab within the Browse panel.
- Exchange Rates
- Display the exchange rate between two selected currencies on a single line. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.
- Exchange Rates Table and Exchange Rates Table Inverse
- Display the exchange rate between a selected base currency and any number of currencies in a table format. The normal table shows exchange rate form the base currency, whereas the inverse table shows exchange rate to the base currency.
- Market Data
- Display the selected market data on a single line. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.
- Market Date Table
- Display the selected market data in a table format.
- Each of the widgets above can be customized using the options provided under "Properties" tab - for more details go to the dedicated section of each widget type, linked above.
- These widgets can only be used on a single screen when creating a multiscreen project; for multiple screens, a data feed widget must be used instead.
Exchange Rates
This widget displays the exchange rate between two selected currencies on a single line.
For full screen, see this video on Vimeo.Configuration
The widget can be customized using the properties found under the "Properties" tab in Edit panel:
- Data
- Click on the button to open the Data Properties dialog and set up the data source and currencies to show.
- Locale
- Select the locale used for displaying the numbers.
- Format
- Click on the button to open the "Edit Text" dialog and modify the text template used for displaying the financial data. The text template should contain one or more data placeholders (e.g.,
[[base_currency]]
,[[rate]]
) and can have different text styles (font family, bold, italic, color) within, however the data placeholders must be treated as wholes (i.e. any style change must be applied to the entire string including the square brackets). The font size however cannot be manually set, because it is calculated automatically by the widget for the text to fit into the widget area. The number of digits can be customized using these number formats.
- Click on the button to open the "Edit Text" dialog and modify the text template used for displaying the financial data. The text template should contain one or more data placeholders (e.g.,
Exchange Rates Table
This widget displays multiple exchange rates for a base currency as a table. The base currency is displayed in the first position.
Configuration
The widget can be customized using the properties found under the "Properties" tab in Edit panel:
- Data
- Click on the button to open the Data Properties dialog and set up the data source and currencies to show.
- Locale
- Select the locale used for displaying dates and numbers.
- Slide duration
- Enter the number of seconds each slide is displayed on the screen.
- Transition
- Click on the button (it opens the "Transition Properties" dialog) and select a transition effect and its properties.
- Looping
- Select whether the widget ends after the last slide or loops to the first one.
- Number of rows
- Enter the number of rows of data to display on a single slide.
- Delay per rows
- Enter the number of seconds to wait before displaying the next row/column of the table.
- Column padding
- Enter the padding to add between columns. This padding can be either absolute number of pixel or percentage.
- Row padding
- Enter the padding to add between rows. This padding can be either absolute number of pixel or percentage.
Cell layout
The table widgets displays each set of data retrieved from the data source using a cell template, whose layout can be edited by the user. Depending on the widget configuration, multiple cells (thus multiple sets of data) can be displayed on the same slide.
The table columns are composed of text layers, that should contain one or more data placeholders (e.g., [[base_currency]], [[rate]]
etc.), which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from the data source when the widget is running. The number of digits can be customized using these number formats.
To edit the columns within the Edit panel, follow these steps:
- Click on the "Column" tab to list all the layers composing the table.
- Click on the button to open the "Layer Properties" dialog and edit that layer properties. Click the "OK" button to apply the changes.
Exchange Rates Table Inverse
This widget is similar to the one above, except that the exchange rates are reversed, the base currency being displayed on the second column.
Market Data
This widget displays the market data for the selected symbol on a single line.
For full screen, see this video on Vimeo.Configuration
The widget can be customized using the properties found under the "Properties" tab in Edit panel:
- Data
- Click on the button to open the Data Properties dialog and set up the data source and symbol to show.
- Locale
- Select the locale used for displaying the numbers.
- Format
- Same as for Exchange Rates widget.
Market Data Table
This widget displays the market data for the selected symbols as a table.
Configuration
The widget can be customized using the properties found under the "Properties" tab in Edit panel:
- Data
- Click on the button to open the Data Properties dialog and set up the data source and symbols to show.
- Locale, Slide duration, Transition, Looping, Number of rows, Delay per rows, Column padding, Row padding
- Same as for Exchange Rates Table widget.
Data source setup
Currencies
The following data source options are available for the Exchange rate widgets:
- Channel
- Select the source of the exchange rate data. Two channels are currently supported: European Central Bank and Alpha Vantage
- Refresh
- Enter a number, optionally followed by
s
(implicit),m
orh
, to specify the period after which the widget should refresh the feed data (this is useful especially when the widget is running in a loop); the minimum accepted value is 60 seconds. Using "When document opens
" will refresh the data only when the document is re-opened.
- Enter a number, optionally followed by
- Base Currency
- Select the base currency
- Currency (1, 2,..)
- Select the target currency (one for the Exchange Rates widget, or as many as needed for the Exchange Rates Table widgets ).
- More button
- By default the table widgets allows the user to configure up to 5 target currency. Using the More button, increases the number of entry by 5.
- At any point, the data source configuration can be tested by clicking on the "Test..." button.
- Data might be cached on SpinetiX proxy for up to one hour to limit the number of requests towards the data provider.
Symbols
The following data source options are available for the market data widgets:
- Channel
- Select the source of the exchange rate data. One channel is currently supported: Alpha Vantage.
- Refresh
- Specify the period after which the widget should refresh the spreadsheet data (this is useful especially when the widget is running in a loop); either select one of the provided options ("When document opens", 5m, 10m, ... , 24h) or enter a number, optionally followed by
s
(implicit),m
orh
; the minimum accepted value is 60 seconds. Using "When document opens
" will refresh the data only when the document is re-opened.
- Specify the period after which the widget should refresh the spreadsheet data (this is useful especially when the widget is running in a loop); either select one of the provided options ("When document opens", 5m, 10m, ... , 24h) or enter a number, optionally followed by
- Symbol
- Enter or select the symbol (for Market data widget) or symbols (for Market data Table widgets) to be displayed by the widget.
- To search for symbols, click the "Change" button to open the "Stock Symbol Search" dialog and enter the company; the search is limited to a set of Exchanges as detailed below.
- More button
- By default, the table widgets allows the user to configure up to 5 target symbols - click the "More" button to add 5 more entries.
- Due to the latest changes in Alpha Vintage limit policy (5 requests per minute), you should not use more than 5 symbols within the Market data Table widget.
- At any point, the data source configuration can be tested by clicking on the "Test..." button.
- Data might be cached on SpinetiX proxy for up to one hour to limit the number of requests towards the data provider. Nevertheless, make sure not to make more than 5 requests within the same minute, as that exceeds the Alpha Vintage limit policy.
- The symbol search is limited to the following Exchanges, depending on the version.
- Elementi 2016: NASDAQ, NYSE, CCY, SNP, and London.
- Elementi 2017 or later: NYQ (NYSE), NAS( NASDAQ ), ASE (NYSE MKT), PCX (NYSEArca), WCB (Chicago options), SNP (S&P), NYS (NYSE), MEX (Mexico), SAO (São Paulo), BUE(Buenos Aires), SGO (Santiago), CCS (Caracas), GER (XETRA), PAR (Paris), VTX (VTX), MIL (Milan), LSE (London), TOR (Toronto), CCY (Currency), STO (Stockholm), OSL (Oslo), CPH (Copenhagen), FGI (FTSE), FSI (FTSE), ISE (Irish), VIE (Vienna), AMS (Amsterdam), ATH (Athens), ICE (Iceland), LIS (Lisbon), MCX (Moscow), IST (Istanbul), ZRH (Zurich), PRA (Prague), BRU (Brussels), RUS (Russian), TLV (Tel Aviv), ASX (Australia), NZE (New Zealand), SHH (Shanghai), HKG (Hong Kong), JKT (Jakarta), OSA (Osaka), KLS (Kuala Lumpur), PHS (Philippines), SES (Singapore), KSC (Korea), KOE (Kosdaq), TAI (Taiwan), HEL (Helsinki).
- More generally, stock quotes are not available for some major markets, in particular: Spain, Poland, India, China, Thailand, Japan and all the Middle-East and Africa (including South Africa) except for Israel.
Troubleshooting
- March 16th, 2021 - Market indexes are no longer returned by Alpha Vantage and the
lastTradePrice
value actually refers to the last closure trading price. Symbols from Swiss market are back, but they need to be manually entered. - July 24th, 2020 - Symbols from the Swiss market are not showing anymore.
- Here is the official answer from Alpha Vantage: “Unfortunately, the Swiss market is beyond the scope of our offering.”
- Nov 1st, 2017 - Yahoo! Finance has shut down their API
- As a consequence, older market data widgets were no longer receiving information. The financial data source has been replaced with Alpha Vantage starting with firmware 4.2.3 / Elementi 2017 Update 2 - existing projects that were using Yahoo! should transparently switch to the new data source, newly created projects will explicitly use the new data source.