Importing market data into Excel

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There is various third party software which can be used to assist players to plan their activities in EVE Online. In particular, traders may find it useful to import market data from EVE-Central to Excel, to transfer the information to a spreadsheet format and allow them to process the data. This guide assumes the use of Excel 2007.

Getting started

To get started you will need the typeID, and either the stationID or systemID or regionID (depending on what data they want to show).

Obtaining the typeID

One way to get the typeID is to use Fuzzwork's API search. To use this, direct your browser to https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/api/typeid.php?typename= and add the name of the item. Note that any spaces in the item name should be replaced with %20.

For example

To obtain the typeID for Iron Charge S you would go to https://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/api/typeid.php?typename=Iron%20Charge%20S which gives the result: {"typeID": 215,"typeName": "Iron Charge S"}, meaning the typeID is 215 

Obtaining the other IDs

This spreadsheet contains an alphabetical list of station, system and region IDs.

Importing data

In order to import the data into Excel you will first need to generate a URL to pull the data from EVE Central, and then import that into Excel.

Obtaining the URL

To obtain the correct URL for EVE Central you need to insert the IDs you have obtained above into this URL: http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?typeid=XXX&usesystem=YYY, where XXX is the type ID and YYY is the system ID (for pulling information from a particular station or a whole region you would alter the URL accordingly).

For example

We know that the typeID for Iron Charge S is 215. If we want to pull the data for Jita we would use the systemID 30000142 from the above spreadsheet. So we will use the URL http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?typeid=215&usesystem=30000142 

Importing this into Excel

If you are using Excel 2007 you will go to Data > Get External Data > From Web as shown on the left. A browser will pop-up at your spreadsheet, in which you will paste the URL which was obtained above, and click Import. A new window will pop-up asking where to put the data, and you will need to select Existing worksheet, type $A$2 (to place it in cell A2) and select Import again.

For example

If we use the URL http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?typeid=215&usesystem=30000142 which we generated above in Excel it will pull the data for Iron Charge S in the system of Jita. If we also want to pull data on the same item for The Forge region we would alter the URL to end in regionlimit=10000002, meaning the link would be http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?typeid=215&regionlimit=10000002. If we import that into cell A3 we will get the following result: 

Understanding imported data

We have at column A of the spreadsheet the "API Version" and at the column B we have the "Method", both columns can be ignored. At column C we have the "typeid", at D "buy volume", that represents the total volume of buy orders at the broker, at column E "buy average price", that means that if you want to supply all market demand for the typeid you will receive at the end of the transactions ISK equivalent to column D multiplied by column E, column F is the "maximum price offer of the buy orders", column G is the "minimun price offer of the buy orders", column H is the "standard deviation of buy orders", that is a measure of dispertion of the data around the buy average price, column I is the "median buy prices", that means if you want to supply 50% of the demand selling for the best buy orders you will receive payments between the median and maximun price offer of the buy orders per unit of item sold. At column J we have "percentile of buy orders", this percentile reffers to 95th percentile, that means that if you want to supply 5% of market demand you will receive payments between percentile of buy orders and maximum buy orders prices, in our example we can see at Image 2, that the 95th percentile is the same value of maximum buy orders prices. To understande percentile better I suggest to read Percentile

Columns K to Q are information about sell orders, respectively: Volume, average, maximum, minimum, standard deviation, median, percentile. In the case of sell orders we are talking about 5th percentile, so that means if you want to buy all 5% of the offers at the broker you will pay prices between percentile value and minimum value.

Columns R to X are information about the last 24 hours opperations in market, so it is historical data, they are important to preview future negociations. They are respectivelly: Volume, average, maximum, minimum, standard deviation, median, percentile.

Importing multiple data

To import multiple data you only need to add "&typeid='number'" to URL, so we will add to our data the typeid number 223, that is the number of Iron Charge M. In this way we will have the following URL http://api.eve-central.com/api/marketstat?typeid=215&typeid=223&usesystem=30000142 . We can see at Image 3 the final result of importing multiple data.

Image 3.

Final considerations

It is important to say that you can not trust only in imported data, you need to check the in game market to make sure you are doing the right choice. This happens because XML data of EVE Central is updated each hour, so it can be some deprecated data on it.

On the other hand, you can import multiple data at your Excel to monitor multiple markets, it can help traders to look for better business opportunities.

Another thing that you must know is that after imported, data will not update automatically, so you will need to update imported data everytime you want clicking at button showed at Image 4.

Image 4.