Overview

This is a quick overview of the pycurrency package. The package uses Google’s currency calculator to do live conversions. I cannot promise how accurate compared to bank rates on the ground in the various countries, but they are acceptable for making estimates.

Be a responsible citizen and don’t write code that polls google for every query, instead do caching where ever you can. Caching will make your app run faster anyway!

Installation:

To install pycurrency use the command:

pip install pycurrency

or:

easy_install pycurrency

Usage:

Converting from one currency to another The syntax is Converter(amount,from_currency,to_currency), for example to convert from 1 USD to Jamaican Dollars:

>>> from pycurrency import converter
>>> myconverter = converter.Converter(1,'USD','JMD')
>>> myconverter.result()
u'85.2878465'

If you need other information there is a dictionary which returns the ‘to’ and ‘from’ values which can be retrieved with the ‘ratio’ method:

>>> myconverter.ratio()
{'to': u'85.2878465', 'from': u'1'}

You can change any parameter ‘from_cur’, ‘to_cur’ or ‘amount’:

>>> myconverter.to_cur='EUR'
>>> myconverter.update()
{'to': u'0.72838517', 'from': u'1'}
>>> myconverter.from_cur='EUR'
>>> myconverter.to_cur='JMD'
>>> myconverter.update()
{'to': u'117.091684', 'from': u'1'}

Here’s an example of changing the amount to be converted:

>>> myconverter.amount = '400'
>>> myconverter.update()
{'to': u'46836.6736', 'from': u'1'}