yfinancer

yfinancer provides access to Yahoo Finance’s API, offering functions to download historical prices, company information, and financial statements.

Installation

You can install the released version of yfinancer from CRAN with:

install.packages("yfinancer")

You can install the development version of yfinancer from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("gacolitti/yfinancer")

Usage Examples

Working with a Single Ticker

# Get a ticker object for Apple Inc.
apple <- get_tickers("AAPL")

# Get historical market data (default: 1 month of daily data)
history <- get_history(apple)

# Get 1 year of daily data
history_1y <- get_history(apple, period = "1y")

# Get 1 month of hourly data
history_hourly <- get_history(apple, period = "1mo", interval = "1h")

# Get data for a custom date range
history_custom <- get_history(
  apple, 
  start = "2022-01-01", 
  end = "2022-12-31"
)

# Get company information
info <- get_info(apple)

# Get financial statements
# Annual statements (default)
income_stmt <- get_income_statement(apple)
balance_sheet <- get_balance_sheet(apple)
cash_flow <- get_cash_flow(apple)

# Get all financial statements at once
financials <- get_financial_statements(apple)

# Quarterly statements
quarterly_income <- get_income_statement(apple, freq = "quarterly")

Working with Multiple Tickers

# Get multiple tickers
tech_tickers <- get_tickers(c("AAPL", "MSFT", "GOOG"))

# Get historical data for all tickers
tech_history <- get_tickers_history(tech_tickers, period = "1y")

# Get company information for all tickers
tech_info <- get_tickers_info(tech_tickers)

Search for Tickers

# Search for companies with "tech" in their name
tech_search <- search_tickers("tech", limit = 20)

# Search with news results
results <- search_tickers("Apple", quotes_only = FALSE)
quotes <- results$quotes
news <- results$news

Authentication

Yahoo Finance requires two key authentication components for API access of certain endpoints:

1. A1 Cookie: A session cookie that identifies your session with Yahoo Finance
2. Crumb: A security token that must be included with each request

The authentication process in yfinancer follows these steps:

1. Environment Variables (first priority):
   • Checks for YFINANCE_CRUMB and YFINANCE_A1 environment variables
   • If both are present, uses these values directly
2. Authentication File (second priority):
   • If environment variables aren’t available, checks for an existing auth file at ~/.yfinance/auth
   • If a valid auth file exists, uses the stored values
3. Dynamic Authentication (fallback):
   • If no valid auth exists, generates new authentication:
     • Gets an A1 cookie using curl_chrome110 to mimic a browser request
     • Uses the A1 cookie to request a crumb from Yahoo Finance
     • Stores these values in ~/.yfinance/auth for future use
     Curl impersonate must be installed for this to work. See: https://github.com/lwthiker/curl-impersonate.

# Set environment variables for authentication
Sys.setenv(YFINANCE_CRUMB = "your-crumb-value")
Sys.setenv(YFINANCE_A1 = "your-a1-cookie-value")

This environment variable approach is useful for: - Avoiding authentication failures in automated environments - Testing with specific authentication values

Currently, only the get_info() function requires authentication.

Core Features and Components

yfinancer provides access to the following information:

1. Ticker Functions: Access single ticker data
   • Historical market data (OHLCV)
   • Basic company information
   • Financial statements (income statement, balance sheet, cash flow)
   • Dividends and stock splits
   • Options data
   • Analyst recommendations and price targets
   • News
2. Market Information:
   • Company profile and asset information
   • Key statistics (PE, EPS, EBITDA, enterprise value, etc.)
   • Financial KPIs (revenue, margins, cash flow metrics)
   • Future earnings dates and earnings history
   • ESG scores (environmental, social, governance metrics)
   • Ownership data (insider, institutional, fund)
   • Insider transactions
   • Analyst recommendations and upgrade/downgrade history
   • SEC filings
   • And more (over 30 different data modules available)
3. Search Functionality:
   • Search for quotes
   • Get news from search

Legal Disclaimer

Yahoo!, Y!Finance, and Yahoo! Finance are registered trademarks of Yahoo, Inc. yfinancer is not affiliated, endorsed, or vetted by Yahoo, Inc. It’s an open-source tool that uses Yahoo’s publicly available APIs, and is intended for research and educational purposes. Users should refer to Yahoo!’s terms of use for details on rights to use the actual data downloaded.