Re: an "API"

[Abhijit Dey <omegalist@xxxxxxxxxx>]

John, it's not hocus pocus.
1) It's much simpler than it sounds. Less than a page of code
2) This will be a socket communication between TS & your program. VERY 
robust
3) TS sends email. I am not sure if it writes text files. If it does, 
say "file locking"
4) File based interface would be a order of magnitude slower than socket 
communication
It's about as easy as this
try {
   serverSocket = new ServerSocket(25);
} catch (IOException e) { /* error handling */ }

try {
   clientSocket = serverSocket.accept();
   /* Got the mail here. Parse it. Trade it */
} catch (IOException e) { /* error handling */ }

Just to demonstrate how easy it is for someone to implement this.

Thanks,
Abhijit


On 9/21/2007 2:20 AM, John Pretorius wrote:
> The 2nd approach from Abhijit makes sense - get the alert out there for
> analysis by a third party program. I am puzzled though by the need for
> all the hocus pocus of an email server. Why not simply write out a flat
> file to be picked up by an external program, say Excel which can then
> interface with the API?
>
> John R Pretorius 
> 13 Olive Lane, Morningside Sandton 2196, South Africa
> Telephone +27 11 784 5546 Mobile +27 83 231 5025
> International Fax +27 11 403 8308 SA Fax 086 683 2561 
> Skype john.r.pretorius
> E-mail johnpretorius@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Website http://home.imaginet.co.za/optionscan/
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Evans [mailto:paratradesystems@xxxxxxx] 
> Sent: 20 September 2007 08:07 PM
> To: 'Abhijit Dey'
> Cc: Omega List
> Subject: RE: an "API"
>
>
> I found and downloaded the Tradebolt program but they seem to have died
> around 2004 so I don't know if the program will still work without their
> involvement
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Abhijit Dey [mailto:omegalist@xxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007 10:22 AM
> To: Omega List
> Subject: Re: an "API"
>
> There are a few - look in interactivebroker.com, under 3rd party tools. 
> Avoid anyone trying to charge you per trade - that's a rip off.
> There are 2 approaches to do this.
> 1) Some program monitoring pop-up alerts in TS, and figuring out what to
>
> do. I would strongly advise to avoid this. This approach is very brittle
>
> and will break
> 2) Better approach: Programs running as a mail server in your local 
> machine, and configuring TS to send alert mail to this mail server. Much
> easier than it sounds - less than a page worth of code can accomplish 
> this. Than the program can parse the email body and use IB's API (or 
> whoever else's API) to send / cancel orders. This part - parsing the 
> email body, managing orders in "3rd party" brokers API etc. is the 
> complicated part of the approach. But you have to do that even if go 
> route 1.
> Sadly I don't have any code to share right now. I personally implemented
>
> approach 2, and it worked great. An unfortunate hard disk crash caused 
> me to lose some code, including this (had 2 HDD in raid-mirroring - both
> crashed in 15 minutes interval... can you believe that?). Anyways, I am 
> a bit more discretionary / long-term right now, and haven't bothered to 
> rewrite that code. But it can be done, and it works well.
> HTH,
> Thanks - Abhijit
>
> On 9/20/2007 10:48 AM, Chris Evans wrote:
>   
> > Does anyone know anyone who writes API programs that route orders from
> >     
>   
> > TS 8.2 to a broker other than RJ O'Brien?  Is this a hugely expensive 
> > interface? CE
> >   
> >     
>