Free Python tool pulls official exchange rates from five central banks without an API key

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An 18-year-old engineering student built a paid Apify actor, Central Bank Exchange Rates, that gathers official rates from the ECB, NBP, CNB, Bank of Canada and Norges Bank. The tool addresses a gap in free currency APIs, which often require keys, limit requests, or omit their data sources. Each output row labels whether a rate is official or a cross rate derived from a bank's same-day fixing. The article includes Python and Node examples and notes that banks fix at different times, so their rates differ slightly. It also explains a bookkeeping use case: converting foreign-currency invoices at the NBP rate for the last business day before the invoice date.

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Browser-based TNEF parser opens winmail.dat files without uploading them

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