So, in my last post I said that I was not going to continue developing Investment Tracker, and you should be happy with what was already released. Well as you can see, that is not quite true. If you are impatient and don’t want to read the rest of the post, here are the download links:
- http://www.ajkrause.net/downloads/invtracker-1.1.tar.bz2
- http://www.ajkrause.net/downloads/invtracker-1.1.tar.gz
- http://www.ajkrause.net/downloads/invtracker-1.1.zip
So, my goal with this release was twofold. First, I wanted the quotes to refresh automatically given a set interval. While I could easily have done this by refreshing the browser periodically, this was a perfect opportunity to learn some AJAX and refresh my rusty JavaScript skills. This required a rewrite since rendering would have to be done with JavaScript rather than PHP. Much of the processing is now client side instead of server side, which is a plus. Note that since I refuse to also implement ActiveX, you should use Firefox, Opera, IE7+, or some other browser that supports XHttpRequest.
While motivated to continue writing this script, I now store the configuration in an internal file, rendering the config.js file dynamically with config.php. This allowed me to easily implement the ability to edit current positions, delete current positions, add new positions, and edit application settings. If you want to see what this script does, try the demo!
I have a few plans for the future including user administration, multiple accounts, and inline stock charts. This is, of course, very dependent on my level of motivation …
As pointed out by a few people, I haven’t added any blog posts to this page for quite some time. In fact, I removed all of the posts and then had a blank page for months. However, I thought it prudent to post a little code that I wrote this afternoon. Let me give you some background on it.
I am saving money in order to buy a house in a few years. I want to track my investments, but after every trade, the cost basis in my account becomes obfuscated from my original contributions. So, I worked up a small PHP script called Investment Tracker. It can be downloaded as a BZ2, GZ or ZIP archive from the following locations:
- http://www.ajkrause.net/downloads/invtracker-1.0.tar.bz2
- http://www.ajkrause.net/downloads/invtracker-1.0.tar.gz
- http://www.ajkrause.net/downloads/invtracker-1.0.zip
To get it to work, just edit the five variables in config.php file and then upload the files to a server directory. I placed a few random examples in the configuration file to make it easy to install.
After installing, the program uses real time quotes from Yahoo to track the daily change, total change from cost basis and current value of each fund and the total account. I realize that this release is scant on features, but that is what I wanted. It suits my purpose as a simple investment tracker, so I don’t foresee making any major changes to it. However, I will release any bug fixes in this post in the future. Feel free to tinker and extend if you so choose since it is GPL 3!