With how fast the world moves nowadays, it’s important to stay updated on the different rates of the product we are investing in. For that, it’s highly recommended to use an API and here we explain to you how.
But first, let’s talk about the metal you’re probably interested in: pewter. This is a malleable metal alloy made up of tin, antimony, copper, bismuth, and occasionally silver. Hardeners like copper and antimony are employed, although lead can be added in lesser grades of pewter to give it a blue color.
Older pewters with a higher lead concentration are heavier, tarnish faster, and have a deeper silver-gray hue after oxidation. Due to the toxicity of lead, lead-containing pewters are no longer used in objects that will come into contact with the human body. Modern lead-free pewters are available, however many lead-containing pewters are still manufactured for other uses.
The highest production of pewter in the world is in Asia, most specifically in Kuala Lumpur, and is called Royal Selangor. This company operates freestanding storefronts in the world’s biggest retail cities, including London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Melbourne, and Sydney. Top department shops like Wako in Japan, Harrods in London, and Hudson Bay in Toronto also carry Royal Selangor goods.
So, if you’re trying to invest in pewter, you’re looking at an industry that has great potential. Bur before doing it, you need to understand that accessing updated pewter rates on a daily basis is key to your success. This is why live and historical rates are important. The first ones are spot and forward currency quotations in real-time, while the other ones are foreign exchange rates that provide traders with a historical reference of how a currency pair traded in the past.
They are both equally important and are crucial to knowing where and how to invest. To get that information, it could be really useful to use an API. This is a software middleman that allows two programs to communicate with one another. When you send a request to an API, you’ll get an immediate answer.
How To Get An API
To access this type of technology, you need to use a software that provides you with it. There are a few online for you to use. For this example, we will use Metals-API, so we can explain to you better how it works.
To get the API, you need to go to www.metals-api.com and sign in to get an API key. After that, you chose the symbols of the metal and currency you desire and make the API call. Soon after that, you’ll get the answer in various programming languages. And that’s it, you can now use that code however you want.
The API is delivered as JSON API, or JavaScript Object Notation, an encoding technique that eliminates the need for each application to write its own ad-hoc code in order to connect to servers that communicate in a certain way. Support for entity types, bundles, and fields, as well as data storage and data structures, are all included in the JSON API module.
The answer will look something like this:
{
"success": true,
"timestamp": 1519296206,
"base": "USD",
"date": "2018-09-10",
"rates": {
"GBP": 0.72007,
"JPY": 107.346001,
"EUR": 0.813399,
}
}
Is It Trustworthy?
Every minute, Metals-API gets data from over 15 reliable data sources. Banks and financial data providers are among them. As a result, you will receive highly precise pricing. Metals-API calculates the current market value of the world’s most precious metals, including gold, silver, aluminum, platinum, and palladium. The website’s data may be utilized in a variety of places, including spreadsheets, other websites, and mobile apps.
Also published on Medium.