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02 Jan 2020

Eurex | Eurex Clearing | Eurex Group

New free and public reference data API

On 2 January 2020, Eurex launched a public T7 reference data API. We spoke to Viktor Uvarov from Market Functionality at Eurex and Thomas Fischbach and Reda Jazouli from AD Interface Design at Deutsche Börse about the new service and its future.

refdataapi team 2
Viktor, Thomas, Reda open the door to the reference data

What is the Eurex T7 reference data about?

The Eurex reference data are the parameters that define our products. These are hundreds for each derivative, ranging from the product ID “FDAX”, the start of trading “1:00” or the minimum size for block trades “250”, and so forth.

Where does the idea to offer a free API to everybody come from?

Eurex offers various contract and product information as csv or Excel files spread across the web page as public information. With the API, we merge all this available information into a single, machine-readable source. No more downloading, polling, and parsing of files should be necessary.

Currently, our customers can use the well-designed reference data interface from T7. This service is offered for free, but only available to registered members. The new service is publicly available to anyone. The new API provides information in the according tables on Products, Contracts, TES configuration, Trading hours and Expirations.

How easy is it to access the API and to retrieve the data?

The API uses GraphQL as an HTTP Data Query Language. Depending on the customer's programming language, he uses one of the available GraphQL client libraries to integrate the API into his ecosystem. But before that, I would recommend using a GraphQL GUI client to check the API connection and to develop and run GraphQL queries. Once done, the customer can integrate a GraphQL client library and use his custom queries to retrieve the required data.

Is access to the API public?

The Eurex Reference Data GraphQL API is available to customers anonymously. Everyone is able to call the API by using the API URL (https://api.developer.deutsche-boerse.com/prod/accesstot7-referencedata/1.1.0/)  and a shared API key ("X-DBP-APIKEY": "68cdafd2-c5c1-49be-8558-37244ab4f513").
However, the shared API Key is rate limited. Customers interested in better data throughput should create a dedicated API Key via Deutsche Börse’s developer portal (https://console.developer.deutsche-boerse.com/apis).

By creating an account in the portal, customers receive their own API Key allowing them to call and request data from the API. The Digital Business Platform provides Documentation, a Get Started Guide, and support to quickly onboard customers and help them with their API requests.

Where can if find the API documentation?

Thanks to the introspection mechanism provided by GraphQL, customers can get information about all the available requests, filters and responses. This mechanism is supported by all the GraphQL GUI Clients, such as GraphiQL or GraphQL PlayGround.
The great advantage of this feature is that the API and the documentation can never go out of sync.

One example?

Many customers approached us to provide the trading hours in a better format. Up till now, they were only available via the specific product websites, circulars, or contract specifications, and therefore difficult to extract.
With the new API, you have all the information available via the Trading Hours table.

What are the plans for the future?

We now have a cutting-edge API based on GraphQL and JSON, giving clients efficiency and us flexibility and a shorter time to market. The new service is a prototype; customer feedback will direct our next steps.
One idea is to integrate all available data files of the product information section. We also already received requests to include market models and product holidays. 


Market Status

XEUR

The market status window is an indication regarding the current technical availability of the trading system. It indicates whether news board messages regarding current technical issues of the trading system have been published or will be published shortly.

Please find further information about incident handling in the Emergency Playbook published on the Eurex webpage under Support --> Emergencies and safeguards. Detailed information about incident communication, market re-opening procedures and best practices for order and trade reconciliation can be found in the chapters 4.2, 4.3 and 4.5, respectively. Concrete information for the respective incident will be published during the incident via newsboard message. 

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