VS2019 debugging

bobsnail

Sorry very new to all this but I have written my bot in VS2019 community, set my breakpoints, attached the process, started the back test in Ctrader and am hitting the breakpoints. Now im getting lost in the soup and have a few questions

1) So im breakpointed into my code (preumabley at candle 1 close as not currently using on tick), i can view the variables/set watches and step through the code i get all that. I can 'continue', step over and step into but which candle am i at is there an easy way to tell?

2) My bot is quite selective, it opens 2 or 3 longer term trades a month. So on my chart it hits the conditions on 15th March, but its not opening the trade as i expect. How can i stop the execution around that time to step through? Surely i dont have to step through every candle? (im expecting the answer to be that i need to improve the logic of my code so i can breakpoint more effectively but debugging is a great learning tool i find)

Ive seen and understand the videos mentioned in the 'Do i need to buy vs2019 enterprise' thread, i can navigate the IDE and use the tools, its just the implementation im confused about. Any chance of a further video perhaps demonstating how to debug when an expected trade is not made etc?

Aware that my mindset is probally wrong, can anyone point me in the right direction please?

Mike

Hi, Bob,

You just need to learn two things.

cTrader API methods and properties - cTrader API Reference
How to debug using Visual Studio - Visual Studio Debugging

Conditional Breakpoints
This is the best method to stop when a condition in the code is met, use a conditional breakpoint.

With the information above you should be able to solve your problem.

bobsnail

Thanks for the quick reply, conditional breakpoint makes sense, but my algo does quite a lot of different calcs (probally all nonsense to be honest so dont be impressed haha) compares the results and if certain criteria are met opens (or closes) a position. Im not really sure which conditions are not being met so setting conditional breakpoint is hard (hence question 1 about knowing the timestamp of the candle so at least i can breakpoint into the approximate time.

For example, I tried the below which doesn't trigger when im running a backtest? i can set a breakpoint before it then step through but this.backtesting is false (im backtesting march data and seeing the results in the equity and trade statistics tabs etc ) literally just steps over it? Is there a better way to get the candle time, so i can then conditionally breakpoint on that?

if (this.IsBacktesting)
{
DateTime MyDateTime = Server.Time;
}

Mike

Hi, Bob,

This forum is mainly for programming help, you need help with using Visual Studio and placing breakpoints when conditions are met using the example I provided in the previous post, try posting on StackOverflow and cTrader.com.

bobsnail

thanks again, forgive me if i misunderstand, but Imy previous query was a cAlgo API specific coding question and I provided a code snippet while asking if there was a better way or if there were any known reason why the this.IsBacktesting method would not work? Are you saying this is not the correct forum for that?

bobsnail

Actually nevermind... i re-intalled C-trader and its now functioning as i expect. I can conditional breakpoint based on time now so that answers the query i guess.