did yahoo finance api stock returning stock option data?

Question

i'm using the yahoo finance api for stock and stock option data. this used to work:

http://quote.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=VCR.X&f=l1c1n

that's once of the options for Visa. this doesn't work anymore, and when i go to yahoo finance their option symbols are all differnt now, looking like this:

VEH100220P00055000

that's an option for Visa now. and if i plug that long one into the url it doesn't work either. anyone know if they are changing things with their options and broke this?

India

Answer 1

Option symbology is highly complicated. The symbols for option chains will periodically change, when the contracts roll and new contracts are available.

If you want options market data that has been cleaned, you will probably have to pay for it. XIgnite has a couple of web services providing options data: http://www.xignite.com/xoptions.asmx

Whitson

<a href="xignite.com/">Xignite</a> looks like what is needed, but that pricing puts the average person doing just a small amount of lookups right out of the market. The lowest price is a $4000+ commitment to start and several hundred a month! – Factfinding

Answer 2

As of 1/4/16

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/?s=v160122C00075000

will return the Option quote where: v is the Visa Ticker symbol 160122 is the Date C is for Call (change to P for put) 00075000 is the price (or $75)

but in excel, this will place the data vertically in 2 columns (first being header, second being the data)

Agretha

That is yahoo's correct format for options ('TSLA180119C00450000' is an example that will be valid until January 19 2018), but when I tried it inside the yahoo_finance python api it just returns "None". Did it actually work for you? What language were you using? – Equalize