Real-Time Stock Prices (RTSP)

Inspiration

We wanted to build an integrated experience for Facebook users to have real-time financial data at their fingertips.

What it does

Given a stock symbol, the app delivers real-time stock prices along with the price change as well as percentage change.

How I built it

I built the app through many rounds of trial and error and testing to obtain a well-performing model. I am using a live Glitch app to handle the Wit requests, and the stocks api I am using is from IEX Cloud (link)

Challenges I ran into

Firstly, it was a challenge setting up a Python app to communicate with my Wit and Facebook apps as there are not many example projects out there yet.

Moreover, even though I was using some sample code from the Wit Github repository, I discovered a few minor errors that were preventing me from receiving responses in my Messenger app.

Lastly, it was a challenge sourcing for a well-designed API as I wanted something that could add value to users by providing insights beyond the typical price data. However, as far as free APIs go, I decided to settle for IEX Cloud's in the end.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am proud to have overcome the challenges I faced, especially when I figured out a bug in the sample code after hours of debugging. Through the debugging process, I am thankful to have interacted with the Wit.ai community which has been really helpful and encouraging to me, and allowed me to push through to complete a fully-functional app in a short period of time.

What I learned

I should not be afraid of not knowing things and should view such situations as opportunities to learn and grow. By being curious and reaching out to the community, I have gained much insights into what Wit can do and also discovered more about different tools for app deployment such as Glitch, ngrock and Heroku.

What's next for RTSP

I would definitely look towards providing more insights with data such as recent news, trends and the like. However, this would require a rich and reliable data source to be accomplished. On the user experience side, I think more work could be done especially with regards to the possibility of images and visualisations.

Built With

• iexcloud
• wit.ai