ForexPy

A command-line tool for currency conversion that fetches live Forex exchange rates from popular exchange services using web scraping.

Motivation

When sending money to another country, how to choose which service to use?

• You could google the conversion ,visit every site and compare the rates to find the best exchange rate

OR

• Use ForexPy and get rates from major services with a single command!

Personally, I was frustated whenever I needed to do a foreign transaction. If I choose one service due to its better rate next time the same service might be offering the worst rate. Therefore, I created ForexPy to save myself time, hassle and money.

Quick Start

For Linux & Windows: Install using:

• Pypi

Using a virtual envrionment is recommended with pip

pip install fxpy

• Git

pip install git+https://github.com/navrajkalsi/forexpy.git

• Clone the Repo

git clone https://github.com/navrajkalsi/forexpy
cd forexpy
pip install .

Usage

In Windows, use the new Windows Terminal, preferably in Administrator mode. DO NOT USE STRAIGHT COMMAND PROMPT or POWERSHELL! Click for more details.

In Linux this tool requires root access (because of usage of keyboard library).

Therefore, run the terminal as root OR run the command as sudo. USE 'sudo -E' TO PRESERVE ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. Not doing so may lead to 'ModuleNotFound' Error.

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• IMPORTANT: In Linux, pip installs binaries in ~/.local/bin. Therefore, this directory should be in PATH of user & sudo -E has to be used to ensure that sudo does not reset the PATH.

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After Installation is complete, ForexPy can be used in the following ways:

• With Arguments (No root privileges required): If you know the ISO Alpha 3 Codes of the currencies you want to convert, simply use the following command and pass the currency codes as arguments. The below example uses 'CAD' and 'INR'.

Flag	Flag Description
-s	Sender Currency Code
-r	Receiver Currency Code
-v	Current Version of Tool

# codes are case insensitive
fxpy --sender CAD --receiver INR
# or
fxpy -s cad -r inr

• Without Arguments (Root privileges may be required): If you do not know the exact currency codes, then you could just enter the following command and follow the instructions by entering in the respective country names (these names do not need to be perfect, the program will help in choosing the correct names).

fxpy
# use 'sudo -E fxpy' to preserve env vars

Windows Issue

While testing this tool on different computers, I found myself as a part of the 'works on my machine' meme:)
Context: Windows Command Prompt and Powershell do not natively support ANSI escape codes.
This program does make use of these codes when using the tool without arguments and selecting a country. In such case, if the shell does not support ANSI codes you will see something similar:

To resolve this use Windows Terminal and use Command Prompt in this terminal. Side Note: If you haven't already, you SHOULD try this terminal. It houses all the shells and even WSL! It looks incredible too.