Create own free fixer.io

In a lot of financial application, you need to have fresh rates for conversions between currencies. It seems easy to use open and free solution, but in real world it is not always so.

Fixer.io has API for free. But from the early time, you must obtain API-key for basic free API. Then you must purchase even via HTTPS access. If you want to save your money, you can just parse a data from the same source.

The source which uses by fixer.io and similar web services is https://ecb.europa.eu/stats/policy_and_exchange_rates/euro_reference_exchange_rates/html/index.en.html

Central bank publishes every day updated rates with the base on EUR. But you can’t just use XML URL every day, because it has secured hash for obtaining fresh results. In another case, you will get a data at previous day.

In such case, you must open the website, get a link with hash, then parse XML and then you will have FREE data, which provides by Fixer.io.

But it is difficult, because you must have a hosting for your app. With grabli web extension, you won’t be forced to do it.

Just create a scheduled task and get fresh data every day. You can get API URL and use this in your own app.

About how to use grabli API you can learn here.