How to Use Robinhood API in Python: A Beginner's Guide

Robinhood is an app that allows you to trade stocks, bonds, and options. It is one of the largest and most popular brokerages in the United States. The Robinhood API (Python) has been around since 2012. any developers use the Robinhood API to develop applications for Robinhood clients.

Robinhood is a free stock brokerage app that lets you buy, sell, and trade stocks, options, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies. Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt started this in 2012. It allows developers to create apps that help users make trades and manage their accounts. Note that this API is unofficial API, so most likely, you’ll face rate limits or other issues.

Contents

What is Robinhood API?

Robinhood api python is a python library that makes it easy to access the Robinhood API. Many software developers and companies around the world use this. You can test the API on Python 2.7, 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6.

The core functionality of this library is to make sending requests to the API as simple as possible. This library also provides functions for sending requests in different formats, including JSON and XML.

However, this API is not been officially released. So there may be a day when the 3rd party api’s are shut down, so you can’t be entirely dependent on it.

Uses

It allows developers to access real-time data about the market.
It’s a great way to get information about stocks, ETFs, and options.
It is helpful in building financial apps such as trade bots, market analysis tools, portfolio tracking, and more!
It works for all types of applications, including mobile apps, web applications, desktop applications, or anything else you can think of.
It is good for people who have just started investing.
It prevents short selling, which turns out to be advantageous for investors.

Working

The Robinhood API uses RESTful calls to communicate with the trading platform. You can use the API to create orders, cancel orders and manage your account information. The API provides access to all market data, including bid/ask quotes, volume levels, and open interest rates for stocks, currency pairs, and commodities.

The API returns data in JSON format. It uses HTTP GET requests that specify the URL and the type of resource for which you have made a request. The API also returns an error code if there is an error.

How to access the api

Robinhood offers a variety of ways to access its API, including HTML5, JavaScript, and REST. With the proper setup, you can use these APIs to create your own smart contract apps. Through these, you can automate trading and other tasks.

However, in order to access the API, you need to have a legitimate Robinhood account. In case you are a citizen of the USA, you can create an account free of cost.

Check out this link to access Robinhood API.

Follow these steps:

Install the setup on your system’s python environment.

git clone https://github.com/LichAmnesia/Robinhood
cd Rh
sudo python3 setup.py install

Enter your username and password.

from Robinhood import Robinhood

robinhood_client = Robinhood()
robinhood_client.login(username='abc', password='abcd') //username and password of your robinhood account

To log out anytime, use this :

robinhood.logout()

You need to have greater than 25K to trade using this API on the Robinhood website.

stock_instrument = robinhood_client.instruments('DWT')[0]
buy= robinhood_client.place_market_buy_order(stock_instrument['url'], 'DWT', 'GFD', 1)
sell = robinhood_client.place_market_sell_order

Using this API, you can access the following functions:
- place_market_buy_order
- place_market_sell_order
- place_limit_buy_order
- place_limit_sell_order, etc.

robinhood_client.portfolios() //gives details of your current portfolio/position.

Enter this to obtain information on the market price

print(stock_quote['most recent price']

As mentioned above, ‘gtc’ means good until canceled, and good for the day is called ‘gfd’.

Robinhood Python API Crypto

You can make use of the robin stocks API to access crypto functionalities. It comprises functions like get_crypto_quote(),order_buy_crypto_limit(), order_sell_crypto_limit() to use this well. Using these functions, one can trade without a fee.

Robinhood API rate limit

Robinhood has a limit on the requests you make. This prevents server overloading too. At times, while accessing the server, you may get an error message. That’s because your account might be throttled. Throttling prevents bandwidth too.

Now, to prevent this, you can make use of local caching.

Conclusion

Robinhood API is a key part of the company’s strategy for building trust with investors. In this tutorial, we’ll go into detail about how this API works, how you can use it in Python, and some of the most common uses of Robinhood’s API.

FAQs

Are there any limitations of this API?

Yes, Robinhood api for Python is not preferred for market analysis to a great extent. The access is limited, so we can’t work on large chunks of data for its analysis at the same time.

Can we always obtain real-time data using the API?

No, at times, the data is delayed by twenty minutes. So you may not get real-time data.

Is Robinhood fine for day traders?

Yes, day traders have found this very useful.