metal-price_skill

Overview

This skill automates daily price lookup and Excel export for ferrous alloy listings from the global ferrous alloys website (https://www.qqthj.com). It logs in, navigates to a specified metal and subclass (for example manganese ferroalloy or vanadium ferroalloy), scrapes the today's price table, and saves the results to an .xlsx file.

How this skill works

The skill performs an automated login, navigates the site menu to the chosen metal category and subtype, locates the daily price entry, and extracts the tabular price data. It then formats the data and writes an Excel file using a date-and-metal based filename. The process includes waits, scrolling to ensure tables load, and basic error checks for missing elements or network delays.

When to use it

• Daily retrieval of market prices for a specific ferroalloy
• Automated archival of daily price tables to Excel
• Bulk or scheduled collection of price data for analysis
• When you need a reproducible export filename convention for downstream reporting
• Comparing today’s prices with historical data stored in spreadsheets

Best practices

• Provide valid login credentials and keep them secure; the skill requires authenticated access
• Confirm the target metal type and subclass match site menu labels to avoid missing data
• Allow extra load/wait time on slow networks or during peak site traffic
• Store exported Excel files in a stable path and check for file name collisions before run
• Validate table structure after scraping; different metals may use slightly different columns

Example use cases

• Run daily job to save today’s high-carbon manganese price to YYYYMMDD_highcarbon_manganese_price.xlsx
• Batch query multiple metals (manganese, vanadium) and export each to its own dated Excel file
• Schedule weekly historical pulls for trend analysis and charting in Excel
• Automate a pre-market report by pulling today’s domestic price module before trading hours