Adding to a List in OnStart() breaks OnTimer() call

JoePaladin

I am trying to finish a simple data gathering bot, that will write changes to the pricing for each symbol. As a test in the code below, the OnTimer() call works fine, and simply writes a time stamp to the file. For some super strange reason, when add a simple block of code in OnStart() to fill a List of symbols the OnTimer() methods stops working. It creates the file, but OnTimer() no longer writes anything. If I comment out the block of code adding to the List, the OnTimer() call suddenly starts working again. Why should simply adding to a List in OnStart() break the Timer ???

using System;
using System.Linq;
using cAlgo.API;
using cAlgo.API.Indicators;
using cAlgo.API.Internals;
using cAlgo.Indicators;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace cAlgo.Robots
{
    [Robot(TimeZone = TimeZones.UTC, AccessRights = AccessRights.FullAccess | AccessRights.FileSystem)]
    public class Data2 : Robot
    {
        StreamWriter write1;
        List<Symbol> captureList;

        protected override void OnStart()
        {
            // list
            captureList = new List<Symbol>();

            // desktop
            var desktop = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.DesktopDirectory);
            var filePath = Path.Combine(desktop, "test2.txt");

            // create file
            write1 = File.AppendText(filePath);
            write1.AutoFlush = true;

            // get list of symbols
            //foreach (var symbol in Symbols)
            //{
            //    Symbol found = Symbols.GetSymbol(symbol);
            //    captureList.Add(found);
            //}

            //string msg = "Count: " + captureList.Count;
            //write1.WriteLine(msg);

            // timer start
            Timer.Start(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(100));
        }

        protected override void OnTimer()
        {
            // write to file
            string msg = "Server Time:" + Server.Time.Millisecond;
            write1.WriteLine(msg);

        }

        protected override void OnTick()
        {
            // Put your core logic here
        }

        protected override void OnStop()
        {
            // Put your deinitialization logic here
            write1.Close();
        }
    }
}

Mike

Hi, Joe, I am unsure why you would want to get every single symbol object from the broker, but it will not only take a long time to do this but also consume a lot of memory, maybe you want to just get the symbol string name instead.

// get list of symbols
foreach (var symbol in Symbols)
{
    Symbol found = Symbols.GetSymbol(symbol);
    captureList.Add(found);

    Print(found.Name);
}

If you print the symbol name like above then you can see in the cBot log window when you run the cBot all the objects being returned, also take a look at using Timers in C# as your implementation is incorrect.

https://www.dotnetperls.com/timer

JoePaladin

It is for a trading platform, so we will actually be trading all symbols that have reasonably tight spreads. The spreads will not be tight enough for every symbol, every week, but it needs to review the prior week for all symbols to decide which symbols are tight enough to trade for the upcoming week. Memory and CPU are not constraints. The plan is to gather up most of the global excess liquidity over time, which may sound unlikely, but we will definitely do better than the medallion fund in that respect.

The issue is you guys are not exposing the Symbols collection, so the foreach call does not work. It compiles, and it runs, but it hoses things including the OnTimer() call no longer getting called. No big deal, took about 15 minutes to type the list of symbols supported by IC Markets. It was less than 100.

JoePaladin

I thought about using a c# timer instance, but the cAlgo built in OnTimer() function is working fine, as long as I do not have that foreach call on Symbols in the code. It only needs one Timer instance to write the data for all of the symbols. I figured it out finding a post from many years ago. The support response back then was that although the Symbols collection is not currently exposed to iterate through, they planned on adding that later. From a broker perspective though, I see why it is best to not allow full access to the Symbols collection, so it probably should not be changed.

Mike

Hi, Joe,

It may be worth noting that we are not the creators of the trading platform, you may need to contact Spotware with any further questions regarding the API architecture.

https://ctrader.com/forum/calgo-support