Where can we learn about crypto exchanges' APIs? Also for excel?

[justinc1089]

All of the crypto exchanges that I have been on looking around a bit so far, do not tell hardly anything at all about their APIs. If you go to their API documentation sections, they sometimes don't even tell you what URL you are supposed to use to get certain kinds of information. It's like they assume everyone just somehow already knows, and maybe people with knowledge about things like programming, coding, etc., already all do know, but there are plenty of us who don't know at all lol.

Is there anywhere explaining more about these APIs? I searched for a forum connected to Bittrex for example, but found nothing. I searched Kraken's website for more help with their API, and I did find a little tiny bit more helpful information, but not what I needed.

The exchanges that I have poked around a lot to just a little were Coinbase, Kraken, and Bittrex. I plan to work with other exchanges' APIs too such as Binance, Exmo, Hitbtc, and probably others as well.

Also a second question related to this: is there anywhere anyone knows of explaining how to use these crypto exchange APIs with Excel? Because I hate the sites I find like coinmarketcap and really need to be able to just get the data myself through exchange APIs.

I found one pretty good video on how to use Bittrex's API and with Excel too, but so far I just absolutely cannot find any information at all anywhere on how these APIs work, how I am supposed to know what URLs to use to get what information, or how to work with the APIs with Excel.

Or perhaps that is the main problem: are APIs intended for other purposes and I'm trying to do something ignorant with them?

I wish I had been able to study more of this stuff in college but I went for business not technology so that boat has sailed! Of course I'm always open to suggestions on books, videos, or whatever else to learn about programming and so on. It seems like knowing enough about all of that to write a bot and other things is extremely useful when it comes to crypto. I know my familiarity to some degree with excel has certainly been helpful to me with crypto.

[NeuroticFish]

I didn't really use their API, but, since you didn't get an answer yet, I'll give it a try.
Imho the exchanges' API is oriented for... exchanging coins. I mean you make an account, you get your user's API key and, with those functions you can make/use bots that help you with trading/day trading/arbitrage..

Now, maybe you can get from their API other info too - for example, I think that such API is used to get the current price and volumes from various exchanges, make some sort of average and show it, like preev.com does.

So, try to explain in simple steps the first things you want to retrieve/access with those API. I mean, what you want to see in that excel?! Maybe people can help you achieve what you need, step by step.

[pooya87]

All of the crypto exchanges that I have been on looking around a bit so far, do not tell hardly anything at all about their APIs. If you go to their API documentation sections, they sometimes don't even tell you what URL you are supposed to use to get certain kinds of information.

except for very rare cases of small exchanges with no users and no volume at all they do tell you how the API works, where the base URL is and all the rest of the information you need. for instance Bittrex that you mentioned has the URL literary in first paragraph of its documentation last time i checked.
these URLs are usually a "base" URL. for example https://www.exchangeName.com/api/version/ then you append commands to this URL like baseUrl+getMarketSummaries and any additional variables required with ? and & separators: +?marketName=BTC_LTC&time=149005655

now if you want to make a private call such as commands like getBalance you need to sign this with your API keys and include the keys in your header which i don't think is what you want. you ant the public stuff only.

Is there anywhere explaining more about these APIs? I searched for a forum connected to Bittrex for example, but found nothing. I searched Kraken's website for more help with their API, and I did find a little tiny bit more helpful information, but not what I needed.

the API docs are more than enough. try looking at the examples that they always include. if there is some API wrappers then that might help you too.

Also a second question related to this: is there anywhere anyone knows of explaining how to use these crypto exchange APIs with Excel? Because I hate the sites I find like coinmarketcap and really need to be able to just get the data myself through exchange APIs.

i think you need to know VB.net and i have no idea how that works

Or perhaps that is the main problem: are APIs intended for other purposes and I'm trying to do something ignorant with them?

API is just the same as you opening the website itself, it is making a call to another computer and giving you some information back. in case of opening the site in your browser you get the answer in HTML, but when you make an API call you get the answer in JSON! then you interpret the HTML as a website and render it that way, but the JSON is just raw data that you work with and render anyway you like it can be in an excel sheet or inside some script running 24/7 with some trading strategy in the background.

[justinc1089]

I didn't really use their API, but, since you didn't get an answer yet, I'll give it a try.
Imho the exchanges' API is oriented for... exchanging coins. I mean you make an account, you get your user's API key and, with those functions you can make/use bots that help you with trading/day trading/arbitrage..

Now, maybe you can get from their API other info too - for example, I think that such API is used to get the current price and volumes from various exchanges, make some sort of average and show it, like preev.com does.

So, try to explain in simple steps the first things you want to retrieve/access with those API. I mean, what you want to see in that excel?! Maybe people can help you achieve what you need, step by step.

I am making a list like this:


ASK        BUY         LAST          PAIR

4.4         3.4          4.3             XYZ Binance

55           56           55.5          NMJ Bittrex



I can already do some exchanges like Bittrex and Exmo, but others like Binance and Kraken do not give examples of their url links for their APIs. Because they do not list any examples I can't figure out what the url links are, and I don't know where to find out. I guess I should bug their support but I really didn't want to since most exchange support staff always seem to not yet really exist for less serious matters. Exchanges I've been on typically seem to run on so little staff that they can barely keep the exchanges functioning lol.

[justinc1089]

All of the crypto exchanges that I have been on looking around a bit so far, do not tell hardly anything at all about their APIs. If you go to their API documentation sections, they sometimes don't even tell you what URL you are supposed to use to get certain kinds of information.

except for very rare cases of small exchanges with no users and no volume at all they do tell you how the API works, where the base URL is and all the rest of the information you need. for instance Bittrex that you mentioned has the URL literary in first paragraph of its documentation last time i checked.
these URLs are usually a "base" URL. for example https://www.exchangeName.com/api/version/ then you append commands to this URL like baseUrl+getMarketSummaries and any additional variables required with ? and & separators: +?marketName=BTC_LTC&time=149005655

now if you want to make a private call such as commands like getBalance you need to sign this with your API keys and include the keys in your header which i don't think is what you want. you ant the public stuff only.

Is there anywhere explaining more about these APIs? I searched for a forum connected to Bittrex for example, but found nothing. I searched Kraken's website for more help with their API, and I did find a little tiny bit more helpful information, but not what I needed.

the API docs are more than enough. try looking at the examples that they always include. if there is some API wrappers then that might help you too.

Also a second question related to this: is there anywhere anyone knows of explaining how to use these crypto exchange APIs with Excel? Because I hate the sites I find like coinmarketcap and really need to be able to just get the data myself through exchange APIs.

i think you need to know VB.net and i have no idea how that works

Or perhaps that is the main problem: are APIs intended for other purposes and I'm trying to do something ignorant with them?

API is just the same as you opening the website itself, it is making a call to another computer and giving you some information back. in case of opening the site in your browser you get the answer in HTML, but when you make an API call you get the answer in JSON! then you interpret the HTML as a website and render it that way, but the JSON is just raw data that you work with and render anyway you like it can be in an excel sheet or inside some script running 24/7 with some trading strategy in the background.

Bittrex does give url link examples and explain how their API works... somewhat. And that is more than other exchanges. I can do what I am doing manually super slowly with Bittrex's API going pair by pair making my list, but I would like to be able to pull all the pairs at once and they do not tell how to do that because they do not give a url link that will get the ticker for all pairs.

Bittrex and Exmo are doable. I've been working on those because they give enough info on url links for their APIs to allow me to know how to get the info I need.

Kraken and Binance are two examples that do not provide sample url links for their APIs. Maybe the code sections in the API documentation sections on exchanges like Kraken and Binance do tell what I need to know... but I'm not a programmer or someone who knows how to write code so I can't make anything out of the code. I mean I did some basic coding in some business computer classes in college, extremely basic stuff, so it's not entirely alien to me, but still also does not tell me anything I need to know.



Yes. I get the concept of the base url and then attaching the next part of the url to the base url. It is the next part that exchanges like Kraken and Binance are not providing samples of in some cases for some things.

I am only after public information. I do have API keys on at least I think Bittrex, but that was for something else. I was messing around with Gimmerbot some, but I never used it because I didn't find any strategy that was consistently profitable really. And I don't really like trading or investing the only ways that it allows right now to begin with so it just was not really what I was after. But anyway point is I'm not after anything I would be using API keys for, and I understand that part of using APIs as well.


That was the impression I understood about APIs, so seeing you say the same as what I thought is good to see!

I appreciate the replies a lot!

[justinc1089]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUrco0uWvMc


^That video is explaining what I'm doing using Bittrex as an example for anyone who would like to see that. If only I could find something like that for other exchanges giving me problems like Kraken and Binance!

[bituperio]

I found one pretty good video on how to use Bittrex's API and with Excel too

As far as using excel, I am positive that you can do it since VBA provides all the tools you´d need to make an HTTP request. I am not so sure if excel is going to give you the real time processing speed that your project requires. I am guessing you may want to do an arbitrage bot??

[pooya87]

Kraken and Binance are two examples that do not provide sample url links for their APIs.

i don't remember where i got these from but i have them in my bot
base URL is https://api.binance.com/
to get all the pairs and other information:
https://api.binance.com/api/v1/exchangeInfo

if you don't need the above information and just want list of coin names and their prices then use:
https://api.binance.com/api/v1/ticker/24hr
bidPrice and askPrice are the live prices

or use this one from version 3:
https://api.binance.com/api/v3/ticker/bookTicker?symbol=LTCBTC
?symbol is optional.

for order book use
https://api.binance.com/api/v1/depth?symbol=LTCBTC
change LTCBTC to any market you want.

[justinc1089]

I found one pretty good video on how to use Bittrex's API and with Excel too

As far as using excel, I am positive that you can do it since VBA provides all the tools you´d need to make an HTTP request. I am not so sure if excel is going to give you the real time processing speed that your project requires. I am guessing you may want to do an arbitrage bot??

You don't have to use VBA to use an API in Excel. You can just go to Data > from web and then use the API url for what you need. I've been doing that with Bittrex and just started with Exmo as well, but other exchanges like Kraken and Binance do not provide examples of API url links for some things including the ticker bid ask last prices. Or at least I can't tell what the url would be from what they provide under their API documentation sections.

VBA may be better for what I'm doing but that is one of the few things I'm not familiar with in Excel. I wouldn't even know where to begin to learn how to make an arbitrage bot lol.

[justinc1089]

Kraken and Binance are two examples that do not provide sample url links for their APIs.

i don't remember where i got these from but i have them in my bot
base URL is https://api.binance.com/
to get all the pairs and other information:
https://api.binance.com/api/v1/exchangeInfo

if you don't need the above information and just want list of coin names and their prices then use:
https://api.binance.com/api/v1/ticker/24hr
bidPrice and askPrice are the live prices

or use this one from version 3:
https://api.binance.com/api/v3/ticker/bookTicker?symbol=LTCBTC
?symbol is optional.

for order book use
https://api.binance.com/api/v1/depth?symbol=LTCBTC
change LTCBTC to any market you want.

I stated that incorrectly.

Kraken and Binance DO give SOME sample url links in their API documentation. They just don't, at least to my not very technically informed self, give samples of all of their url links.


AH! I did not know the bid and ask price are live! On another exchange's API the url link named 24 hour ticker that also displays a list of coin names and prices uses 24 hour average price or something. So I guess I assumed that was the same way when it is actually live. That just might give me the info I need on Binance!



--or use this one from version 3:
https://api.binance.com/api/v3/ticker/bookTicker?symbol=LTCBTC
?symbol is optional.--



Yeah. That was the only url link I could come up with on Binance and that does not give me the info I need. Well it might, but when Excel opens that url link as a web query from get data > from web, excel opens it in such an awkward way that I don't know how to edit it down to displaying only the info that I would need. It brings up I think all pairs, but I don't know how to get excel in the power query to edit it all down to just 1 pair's bid ask and last prices.


Thanks for the reply.

[justinc1089]

Just tried the Binance url. I remember now I did try it before. It does work, somewhat. The problem is when you use the 24 hour url in Excel, when excel opens the web query/ power query it opens that url as a link of records like this:

Record
Record
Record
…
…


And so on to the bottom. You have to click on each one before you can see that the first is ETHBTC, the second is NEOBTC, and so on. And the thing that worsens that problem is that they seem to be in no particular order because I remember I went down to like 16 and never did run across BTCUSD or BTCUSDT or whatever I had been looking for.

I CAN just create queries to that random list, but I would like to be able to know what I'm about to open, or even better, be able to link to a single pair.

I'm going to look at your post again though because I think you may have linked one url that does that. I'm thinking I did not know how to finish the url with the test before the LTCBTC part and I think you did say what that part of that url is. If so that's what I'm looking for and somehow overlooked it just now lol.