Building a CIK Lookup Module

For our application we need a way to look up a company CIK without using the web form.

The SEC has a page called accessing EDGAR Data. On that page CIK data is in 3 formats.

• company_tickers.json: data file for ticker, CIK, EDGAR conformed company name associations.

• company_tickers_exchange.json: data file for EDGAR conformed company name, CIK, ticker, exchange associations

• company_tickers_mf.json: fund CIK, series, class, ticker

NOTE: Follow the SEC EDGAR Fair Access Policy

Fair access is described on the accessing EDGAR Data page.

Fair access

• Current max request rate: 10 requests/second.

To ensure everyone has equitable access to SEC EDGAR content, please use efficient scripting. Download only what you need and please moderate requests to minimize server load.

SEC reserves the right to limit request rates to preserve fair access for all users. See our Internet Security Policy for our current rate request limit.

The SEC does not allow botnets or automated tools to crawl the site. Any request that has been identified as part of a botnet or an automated tool outside of the acceptable policy will be managed to ensure fair access for all users.

Please declare your user agent in request headers:

Sample Declared Bot Request Headers:

User-Agent:	Sample Company Name AdminContact@<sample company domain>.com
Accept-Encoding:	gzip, deflate
Host:	www.sec.gov

Our Python Module

Our Python Module will be a class that initializes and stores the EDGAR company data into a hash map (dictionary). Once we store the data we can use it to go from company name or ticker to its CIK number

• Write a class that initializes two dictionaries.

  • One where the company name is the key

  • One where the stock ticker is the key.

• When the method initializes it should retrieve a fresh copy of the data from the URLs provided by SEC EDGAR

  • This will allow your function to always have the latest and correct data.

• The class should have two methods. (Method names should follow PEP8 Style Guide)

  • Ex: name_to_cik

  • Ex: ticker_to_cik

  • The The return values should be a tuple that at least includes CIK, Name, Ticker but could include more information.