Getting market data from barchart

barchart.py

# luis rodil-fernandez & hrvoje hirsl
import requests
import json
import urllib
from datetime import date

API_KEY = "93a7e50ea20390edd76b6f9a5de74570"
BASE_URL = "http://marketdata.websol.barchart.com/getHistory.json?"

def get_daily(ticker, params=None):
    params['key']= API_KEY
    params['symbol']= ticker
    params['type'] = 'daily'
    q = urllib.urlencode(params)
    page = requests.get(BASE_URL+q)
    # check if request was successful
    if (page.status_code == 200):
        response = page.text  # get contents of page
        return json.loads(response)
    

# sample fetch for APPL
daily = get_daily('APPL', {'startDate' : date(2014, 9, 21).strftime('%Y%m%d000000'), 'endDate' : date(2014, 9, 22).strftime('%Y%m%d000000')})