Given a ticker symbol return the name of the company. This uses Google's finance API

index.py

import urllib2
import re

url = 'http://www.google.com/finance/info?infotype=infoquoteall&q='

def get_name(ticker):
   try:
      response = urllib2.urlopen(url+ticker)
   except:
      print("Oops! Looks like we don't support that ticker.")
      return

   data = response.read()
   match = re.search('"name" : ".(.*?)"', data)

   if match:
      name = match.group().split(':')[1].translate(None, '!@#$%^&*",.').strip()
      print(name)
      return
   else:
      print("Oops! Looks like we couldn't find a name for you.")
      return

print("WMT")
get_name('WMT')
print("------------------------------------")
print("F")
get_name('F')
print("------------------------------------")
print("MMM")
get_name('MMM')
print("------------------------------------")
print("XXX")
get_name('XXX')
print("------------------------------------")