Recently, the popularity of trading and investment websites in digital environments has increased significantly. Buying and selling currency quickly online is one of the biggest innovations and services brought about by the digital age. Today, many trading platforms allow their users to instantly convert hundreds of currencies. In particular, trading platforms that serve internationally and want to reach large audiences provide detailed exchange rates history to their users on their websites. They usually get this data from a historical exchange rates API.

Platforms that provide exchange rates history can easily reach large user masses. The main reason for this is that millions of users and traders around the world make their investment transactions according to the values of historical currencies. Platforms provide users with a table or line chart and historical exchange rate data so that they can be easily read and analyzed. In this article, we will see how we can plot a table with the data obtained from the historical exchange rates API in a few steps with WordPress, the most popular content management system of today. But before that, we will introduce the advantages of using historical exchange rates and the best historical exchange rates API today.

What are the Advantages of Using Historical Exchange Rates?

Using historical exchange rates has unique advantages for traders. Some of these advantages are as follows:

  • Analyzing Historical Data: Historical exchange rates offer the ability to study, read, and analyze price movements over past periods. These analyses help traders easily understand past trends, support and resistance levels, and price behavior.
  • Strategy Development: Historical exchange rates allow traders to develop and test their trading strategies. Strategies and tests based on historical data can better prepare for future market conditions.
  • Risk Management: Historical exchange rates directly help traders manage risk based on price movements. Risk analysis based on historical data can help traders set stop-loss levels to reduce their losses.
  • Recognizing Trends: Historical exchange rates help traders recognize past trends and market conditions over the past period. Identifying trends can help traders to trade in accordance with the trend.
  • Providing Insight into Future Currency Price Movements: Historical exchange rates can provide traders with insight and foresight into future price movements. Of course, it should be noted that past performance does not guarantee future performance, but some similarities and patterns of past price movements may repeat in the future.

Explore the 7 most popular APIs to unleash the power, including the Fixer API.

Why Does the Fixer API Provide the Best Historical Exchange Rates Service?

home page of the fixer historical exchange rates api

Fixer is an easy-to-use and lightweight API that provides current and historical foreign exchange (forex) rates. This API provides users with the best forex API experience on the market.

There are many reasons why the Fixer API is the best forex API on the market. First of all, this API supports 170 official currencies from around the world. This API provides both live and historical exchange rates for the 170 currencies it supports. Apart from these two services, it also offers currency conversion, time-series, and fluctuation services as separate endpoints.

Learn the advantages of using the FixerAPI for forex trading!

The data provided by Fixer API for 170 currencies with all its endpoints is highly accurate. It obtains its data from highly reliable financial institutions and banks such as the European Central Bank. It also updates its live exchange rate data every 60 seconds. This ensures that platforms using this API always provide their users with the most up-to-date data.

Last but not least, Fixer API is used by international companies such as Microsoft, Samsung, and Bershka and has unique documentation. This documentation is very up-to-date and includes code examples for programming languages such as PHP and JavaScript, API error codes, API endpoints, and detailed descriptions of their parameters. 

Plot Historical Exchange Rates in WordPress Using the Fixer API

In this section, we will dynamically add historical exchange rates provided by Fixer API to a table in WordPress in just a few steps. WordPress installation is required for this.

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The endpoint we will display in the WordPress table will be the Fixer API’s time-series endpoint. This endpoint shows users the movements of currencies over the past time period. In this article, we will show the historical exchanges of TRY, EUR, USD, AED, and CAD against GBP between 2012.05.01 and 2012.05.25 by dynamically adding the following endpoint to a table.

https://data.fixer.io/api/timeseries?access_key=YOUR-ACCESS-KEY&start_date=2012-05-01&end_date=2012-05-25&base=GBP&symbols=TRY,EUR,USD,AED,CAD

Get an API Key

In order to use the unique services provided by Fixer API, we need to obtain an API key. Fixer API offers us many subscription plans with affordable prices and wide usage limits. It even has a free subscription plan that offers up to 1,000 API calls per month.

We need a paid plan for the time-series endpoint we will use in this application. Let’s sign up for one of Fixer API’s subscription plans, starting at $13.99 per month for 10,000 API calls and going up to $79.99 per month for 500,000 API calls, and get an API key.

Install the WordPress Plugin

After obtaining the API key, we will now download the plugin that will provide us with the table where we will display the data we obtained from the Fixer API. For this, on the ‘Plugins’ page in WordPress, let’s find the ‘Visualizer: Tables and Charts Manager for WordPress’ plugin. Then let’s click ‘Install Now’ and click the ‘Activate’ button after the installation process.

list of wordpress plugins

Connect Fixer API to Plugin

Now we can connect the Fixer API to the plug we have activated. For this, first of all, let’s go to the ‘Visualizer’ page in WordPress and press the ‘Add New’ button on the page that opens.

Then, let’s select ‘Table’ from the graph options and press the ‘Next’ button.

chart time of the visualizer

We see dummy data on the screen that opens. In this step, we will dynamically put the Fixer API data into this table. For this, let’s click on the ‘Import data from URL >> Import from JSON >> Create Parameters’ buttons in the menu on the right side of the screen that opens. Then, on the screen that opens, let’s put the following Fixer API time-series endpoint in the ‘Please enter the URL’ field with our own API key and click the ‘Fetch Endpoint’ button.

https://data.fixer.io/api/timeseries?access_key=YOUR-ACCESS-KEY&start_date=2012-05-01&end_date=2012-05-25&base=GBP&symbols=TRY,EUR,USD,AED,CAD

Then we will select ‘root >> rates’ from the ‘Choose the JSON root’ step and click on the ‘Parse’ button.

choose the json root step of the visualizer

We have now obtained the historical exchange rates one by one. To make table adjustments, let’s change the ‘Data Types’ of all currencies to ‘number’ and press the ‘Show Chart’ button on the right. Then, let’s click on the ‘Create Chart’ button on the resulting table page.

select the data to display in the chart step of the visualizer

To change the designs and the appearance of the data in our created table, let’s click on the table we created again and press the ‘edit’ button. Let’s click on the ‘Settings’ tab on the screen that opens and update the ‘precision’ value of each currency to 5 under ‘Column Settings’ and then click the ‘Save Chart’ button.

column settings of the visualizer

Test

Now we can add the historical exchange rates table that we created and configured in WordPress. For this, let’s go to the ‘Posts’ page in WordPress and click the ‘Add New’ button. Then, on the page that opens, click the ‘+’ button in the content section and select the ‘Visualizer Chart’.

post page of the wordpress

After selecting it, click on the ‘Display an existing chart’ tab and click on the button below the table we created earlier.

import table with historical exchange rates to the post

Then, we were able to see that we had successfully imported a table that we had previously plotted with historical exchange rate data in a WordPress post.

table with the historical exchange rates in the wordpress post

Conclusion

As a result, historical exchange rates are frequently used in trading platforms and financial institutions as they offer many advantages. In particular, this data can be converted into a table or line chart, making it easy for users and traders to analyze. Obtaining this data from historical exchange rate APIs and adding it to WordPress content can be easily done in just a few steps. Plugins in WordPress allow developers to dynamically add their data easily with ready-made and innovative designs.

Sign up for our historical exchange rates API, and create a chart in WordPress with highly accurate historical data in just a few steps!

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FAQs

Q: How Many Official Currencies Does The Fixer API Support?

A: Fixer currently supports 170 official currencies worldwide. It provides this data in real-time and receives the data it provides from official financial institutions such as the European Central Bank.

Q: What are the Best Use Cases of Historical Exchange Rates?

A: Historical exchange rates have many use cases for businesses, developers, and traders today. Some of these are as follows:

  • Analyzing Historical Data
  • Strategy Development
  • Risk Management
  • Recognizing Trends
  • Providing Insight into Future Currency Price Movements

Q: Is it Easy to Use The Fixer API in WordPress the Table?

A: Yes, it is. It is quite simple to integrate the foreign exchange rates provided by the Fixer API into a plugin in WordPress and create a table dynamically.

Q: What Endpoints Does the Fixer API Offer?

A: The Fixer API provides its users with multiple services related to foreign exchange rates. It provides these services with separate endpoints. The endpoints that Fixer API offers to its users are as follows:

  • Supported Symbols Endpoint
  • Latest Rates Endpoint
  • Historical Rates Endpoint
  • Convert Endpoint
  • Time-Series Endpoint
  • Fluctuation Endpoint
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