An exchange rate is the amount of one currency it costs to purchase another. They provide critical currency exchange rate information to investors and travelers as well as businesses with international customers. If exchange rates are something that is important to you, your investments, or your business, what would you say to the option of having access to a list of hundreds of exchange rates within one API?
If that is something you are interested in, it is possible with Fixer.io which is a powerful exchange rate api.
Table of Contents
What is Fixer?
Fixer is a simple and lightweight API for current and historical foreign exchange rates. It draws data from 15+ exchange rate data sources. In total, the Fixer API provides real-time exchange rate data for 170 world currencies.
Why Fixer API?
Fixer API comes with multiple endpoints. In addition, each has different functionality, for instance, latest rates, currency conversion endpoint, historical rates, time-series data, and also a fluctuation data endpoint.
These endpoints are the base service for your next projects.
All the exchange rates delivered by the Fixer API are, by default, relative to EUR. All data is also returned in standard JSON format and can be parsed easily using technology.
How to get free access on Fixer?
You can head over to fixer.io and sign up for a free subscription plan. In the free subscription plan, you get:
- 250 API Calls
- Hourly Updates
- Historical Data
How to utilize the Fixer API
After signing up for a free subscription plan, you can make call requests to the API endpoint. Here is an example of a request call with a response:
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{ "success": true, "timestamp": 1519296206, "base": "EUR", "date": "2021-10-17", "rates": { "AUD": 1.566015, "CAD": 1.560132, "CHF": 1.154727, "CNY": 7.827874, "GBP": 0.882047, "JPY": 132.360679, "USD": 1.23396, [...] } } |
As you can see, using the API is straightforward.
How to get historical exchange rates?
You can also get historical rates for most currencies back to the year 1999. To do this, give year, month, and day to the base endpoint to get historical data. Here is a sample.
How to implement currency conversion?
As well as historical data, the Fixer API provides a separate endpoint for currency conversion. You can use this to convert any amount from one currency to another. To use this endpoint, send the convert endpoint with the required parameters. Here is an example of it.
How to get information about currency fluctuation?
In addition to the conversion endpoint, there is a fluctuation endpoint. The fluctuation endpoint shows you how much your chosen currencies fluctuate on a day-to-day basis. You just need to give the start date and end date. Here is an example calling an endpoint:
How to set up Node.js with Fixer API?
Setting up Node.js with Fixer API is pretty simple. First of all, you must have Node.js installed on your machine. If you have done that, then you can follow these commands and steps to initialize a simple Node.js web app and configure the entire project with required npm packages.’
I recommend you download or copy static from the repository.
Finally, the last configuration step is to add a nodemon to the project. This is because the nodemon helps developers reload the project when you have changed the code.
Now you can write this code:
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const express = require("express") const axios = require("axios") const app = express() const port = 1998 app.use(express.static('public')) app.use('/css', express.static(__dirname + 'public/css')) // app.use('/img', express.static(__dirname + 'public/img')) // for images app.use('/js', express.static(__dirname + 'public/js')) app.set('views', './src/views') app.set('view engine', 'ejs') app.get('/api/:version', function(req, res) { res.send(req.params.version); }); app.get("/latest", async function(req, res) { try { const API_ACC_KEY = "9b3bf0619181d7939a977c216c9f2fde"; const ratings = await axios.get( `http://data.fixer.io/api/latest?access_key=${API_ACC_KEY}` ); // console.log(ratings.data.rates); res.render("fixer", { info: ratings.data.rates }); } catch (error) { if (error.response) { console.log(error.response.data); } else if (error.request) { console.log(error.request); } else { console.log("Error", error.message); } } }); app.get('/', (req, res) => res.send('Index Page')) app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Running on ${port} port`)) |
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<div class="card-body"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-md-6 text-nowrap"> <div id="dataTable_length" class="dataTables_length" aria-controls="dataTable"></div> </div> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="text-md-end dataTables_filter" id="dataTable_filter"><label class="form-label"></label></div> </div> </div> <div class="table-responsive table mt-2" id="dataTable" role="grid" aria-describedby="dataTable_info"> <table class="table my-0" id="dataTable"> <thead> <tr> <th>Rate Name</th> <th>Rate Value</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <!-- Iterate key and values on the quotes object --> <% for(const [key, value] of Object.entries(info)) { %> <tr> <td><%- key %> </td> <td><%- value %></td> </tr> <% } %> </tbody> <tfoot> <tr></tr> </tfoot> </table> </div> </div> |
This is the final result:
Here you can see our demo in action: (Check out the full source code here)
