Forex (Foreign exchange) means changing one currency, such as USD, to another, such as GBP. Businesses and individuals often need foreign exchange rates and currency conversion data for various purposes, such as international tourism, international trade, foreign transactions, e-commerce transactions, financial analysis, etc. Since WordPress is one of the most used web content management systems, people often want to display live and historical Forex data on their WordPress websites. This can be achieved using an existing Forex market WordPress plugin or integrating an external Forex live data API in WordPress. Using a Forex data API is a more reliable option as it provides accurate and up-to-date Forex live data.
However, calling an API from WordPress can be tricky for many, especially beginners. That’s why we’ve put together this detailed guide to show you how to call a Forex API in WordPress. We’ll also discuss which Forex live data API you should use to get highly accurate, real-time Forex data and historical market data.
What Are the Different Ways to Get Forex Data in WordPress?
WordPress is a widely used CMS that powers thousands of websites. One of the most like features of WordPress is the availability of numerous plugins for various purposes. These plugins allow developers to improve the capabilities of a website. In terms of Forex data, WordPress has several existing Foreign market and currency rate plugins. However, a problem with using these plugins is that they’re unreliable, meaning you can’t be sure they will provide accurate and real-time data. And since foreign exchange rates can go up and down within a matter of minutes, using inaccurate Forex data can have serious financial implications.
Fortunately, WordPress also lets you call APIs, so you can offer more features to end users. Hence, you can call a Forex API or FX API from WordPress to integrate FX market data into your website. Calling an API is a better option because you can choose a reliable Forex trading data API with a good reputation for providing accurate Forex live and historical data.
When it comes to calling an API from WordPress, you have two main options. Firstly, you can call an API in a plugin, which will populate a widget. You can then put the widget in your theme anywhere you want. The second method involves creating a custom page template and modifying the WordPress theme.
How to Integrate an External Forex Live Data API into a WordPress Page?
For the purpose of this guide, we’ll follow the theme modification method, as it is quicker than creating a plugin and calling the API in the plugin. We’ll make a custom page template to display results from the API request. To modify the WordPress theme, we’ll create a child theme and put the page template in that theme. The reason for creating a child theme is that it’s a safer way to customize your WordPress site without modifying the parent theme. In other words, you can easily update the parent theme without losing your changes.
Let’s get started!
Choosing a REST API
Assuming you already have a WordPress site, the first step to integrating a Forex live data API into your site is to choose a reliable Forex live data API. We’ll be using Fixer JSON API, as it is known to provide highly accurate, up-to-date, real-time Forex data through its ‘latest’ endpoint. Fixer also offers several other API endpoints, such as a historical exchange rates endpoint that can provide historical data from 1999, a currency rates endpoint for single currency conversion using currency pairs, and more. Moreover, thousands of developers, SMBs, and enterprises use Fixer because it supports 170 world currencies, allowing users to get exchange rates of any currency pair of their choice.
Here are some other notable features of Fixer API:
- When you use the ‘latest’ endpoint, you can update live data every 60 seconds, every 10 minutes, or every 60 minutes.
- The API uses reliable data sources to ensure you get accurate data. These include trusted financial data providers and banks, including the European Central Bank.
- Fixer offers a free plan that provides 1000 API calls monthly and supports hourly updates and historical data.
- The API is easy to integrate into your apps and comes with detailed documentation to help you get started quickly. The documentation consists of code examples in several programming languages and all the details about API endpoints.
- The high-performance API returns data within milliseconds and can handle thousands of API requests without compromising performance. Moreover, the API delivers results in a lightweight, human-readable JSON format.
- The API is highly secure. Your connection to the API is encrypted using bank-grade 256-bit SSL Encryption.
- Fixer also offers an endpoint for Time-Series data. This endpoint provides historical rates between any two given dates, with a maximum period of 365 days.
Getting Your API Key
To get your unique Fixer API key, select your desired plan and provide the required details, such as your name, county, email ID, city, etc.
You can use your API key with the following base URL:
http://data.fixer.io/api/latest ? access_key = API_KeyCreating a Child Theme
Now, we’ll create a child theme as follows:
- Make a child theme folder. You need to make this folder in the same directory as your current theme folder.
- Next, create a CSS stylesheet in your child theme folder and name it style.css. The CSS stylesheet can contain code as simple as below:
| /* Theme Name: Forex data Child Template: twentytwentyone */ |
Next, we’ll link to the stylesheet. To do this, we’ll enqueue it within the functions. php file of our child theme folder. Below is an example code provided in WordPress instructions (we’ve modified it for our use case).
| <?php function childtheme_enqueue_styles() { $parent_style = ‘twentytwentyone-style’; // wp_enqueue_style( $parent_style, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/style.css’ ); wp_enqueue_style( ‘child-style’, get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . ‘/style.css’, array( $parent_style ), ); } add_action( ‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘childtheme_enqueue_styles’); |
We now have to activate the child theme by selecting ‘Appearance’ and then ‘Themes’ in the WordPress administration area. You can add an image for the theme by uploading it to your child theme folder.
Creating a Custom Page Template
Creating a custom page template will allow us to interact with Fixer Forex live data API.
One crucial point to note is when you add a file to your child theme, it will replace the same file in the parent theme except for the function.php file in the above section. Thus, it’s recommended to create a copy of your parent theme’s template files and modify the copied files without making any changes in the parent files.
To create a custom template, we’ll first add a header section. This will be a new PHP file called Forexlivedata.php that we’ll save in the child theme folder.
| <?php /* Template Name: Forexlivedata */ |
Integrating Fixer API Into Page Template
First, we’ll get the Fixer API PHP cURL code for real-time exchange rates. The code is available in the API documentation; you need to replace access_key with your unique API key. We’ll display the results provided by the API by decoding JSON format. Doing this will give us an array of objects that we’ll populate in a grid.
| <?php/*Template Name: ForexRates*/get_header(); // set API Endpoint and API key$endpoint = ‘latest’;$access_key = ‘YOUR API KEY’; // Initialize CURL:$ch = curl_init(‘http://data.fixer.io/api/’.$endpoint.’?access_key=’.$access_key.”);curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); // Store the data:$json = curl_exec($ch);curl_close($ch); // Decode JSON response:$exchangeRates = json_decode($json, true); // Access the exchange rate values, e.g. GBP: echo $exchangeRates[‘rates’][‘GBP’];echo $exchangeRates[‘rates’][‘USD’];echo $exchangeRates[‘rates’][‘CAD’];echo $exchangeRates[‘rates’][‘JPY’]; $pageCSS = “<style> .forex-wrapper{ display:grid; grid-template-columns: 200px 200px 200px; } .show-wrapper{padding:10px;} </style>”; get_footer(); |
Replace ‘YOUR API KEY’ with your actual API Key.
Adding a New Page
You’ll now see the custom page template when adding a new page in the WordPress administration panel. Select it and add it to your new page.
Here is how the final page will look:
This page shows the exchange rate of EUR to GBP, EUR to USD, EUR to CAD, EUR to JPY. You can format it by adding titles, creating a grid, etc.
Try Fixer Forex live data for free today!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How can I get Forex live data?
You can integrate Fixer API in your app or a WordPress page to get live and accurate Forex data.
Is there are free Forex API?
Fixer is a reliable Forex live data API offering a free plan with 1000 monthly API calls.
What is the most accurate Forex rates data?
Fixer provides highly accurate real-time and historical Forex trading data.
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