README

Providing live currency exchange rates in Laravel and Lumen, with configurable provider and caching.

Overview

For live currency exchange rates, your choice of provider depends on various factors, including pricing, features, and reliability, which sometimes change. The purpose of this package is to provide a fixed exchange rate endpoint for your application, which can be configured to use one of the various popular providers, and re-configured at any time to use a different provider if necessary.

Installation

Via Composer:

$ composer require viewflex/forex

Configuration

Configuration values must be specified in the application's .env file, or in your environment's $_ENV or $_SERVER arrays - all of these options are supported transparently. Below are sample configurations for the currently supported providers. You can also customize the cache refresh interval as described below.

Supported Providers

Currency Converter API (free)

FOREX_PROVIDER=CurrencyConverterApiFree
FOREX_PROVIDER_URL=http://free.currencyconverterapi.com/api/v6/convert

Currency Converter API (paid)

FOREX_PROVIDER=CurrencyConverterApi
FOREX_PROVIDER_URL=https://api.currencyconverterapi.com/api/v6/convert
FOREX_PROVIDER_KEY=<your-provider-key>

Fixer (free and paid)

FOREX_PROVIDER=Fixer
FOREX_PROVIDER_URL=https://data.fixer.io/api/latest
FOREX_PROVIDER_KEY=<your-provider-key>

*The free subscription supports only EUR as the base currency.

Open Exchange Rates (free and paid)

FOREX_PROVIDER=OpenExchangeRates
FOREX_PROVIDER_URL=https://openexchangerates.org/api/latest.json
FOREX_PROVIDER_KEY=<your-provider-key>

*The free subscription supports only USD as the base currency.

Caching

Use the FOREX_CACHE_MINUTES environment variable to specify how long a rate is cached. Unless specified, the default of 720 (12 hours) is used. Setting this variable to 0 disables caching of rates. Using a longer cache refresh interval can help you to avoid interruption of service (or extra charges if using a paid service).

Usage

$server = new \Viewflex\Forex\Forex();
echo $server->getRate('USD', 'CAD');

Tests

Tests can be run as described in the test documentation.

License

This software is offered for use under the MIT License.

Changelog

Release versions are tracked in the Changelog.