NT8 Programming Help/Advice/Best Practices

September 24th, 2015, 09:41 PM

With the public release of NT8, the Forum might get confusing as to which platform they are looking for programming help. I am starting this thread to help keep NT8 issues separate from NT7.

NT8 Now allows & Supports the following NinjaScript Type (FEEL THE POWER):

AddOns
BarsTypes
ChartStyles
DrawingTools
ImportTypes
Indicators
MarketAnalyzerColumns
OptimizationFitnesses
Optimizers
PerformanceMetrics
ShareServices
Strategies
SuperDomColumns

Given these features, there is very little you cannot do with NT8. I think we are going to see some clever solutions to some difficult problems come out of this new platform with the skills of the community.

This Thread I would like to put in place to help facilitate getting answers to questions:

How to?
Will it?
Best Practice?
XAML?
What is the best way?

September 24th, 2015, 10:00 PM

You may want to have only a single instance of a class within NT8 environment. Maybe this is a logging function or external IO. The following is a "Singleton Footprint" I found. Place this in your class instead of a constructor and replace "MyClassName" with the name of the class. Upon the first request for the "MyClassName.Instance" the class will be instantiated. Additional "MyClassName.Instance" will keep returning a reference to that same instance.

Code

#region Singleton Footprint		
	    private static readonly Lazy<MyClassName> lazy =
	         	new Lazy<MyClassName>(() => new MyClassName());
	     
	     public static MyClassName Instance { get { return lazy.Value; } }

	    private MyClassName()
	    {
                    }
#endregion

Inside your Indicator/Strategy or whatever you would normally have tried to create the "MyClassName" with something like this:

Code

     MyClassName   refClassName=new MyClassName();

Doing this with the proper Singleton Footprint will case a compiler error as "MyClassName()" is restricted as a Private constructor.

To get around this issue and use the Singleton properly, you will use the following line to get access to that singleton class:

Code

     MyClassName   refClassName= MyClassName.Instance;

October 5th, 2015, 07:50 PM

As NT8 is more multi-threaded, you may want to make your singleton classes multi-thread friendly. See this MSDN article on the Singleton Pattern.

Other popularly-used design patterns, all stemming from the publication of this famous book in 1994.

October 19th, 2015, 03:29 AM

Is NT8 out already? Will they offer script translations from NT7? I use NT7 and after spending so much time to learn it I hope they will support it.

BTW, I am now testing the NinjaScript generation feature of Price Action Lab and I am wondering whether the following NT7 script will work in NT8:

Code

//Code starts here
#region Using declarations 
using System; 
using System.ComponentModel; 
using System.Diagnostics; 
using System.Drawing; 
using System.Drawing.Drawing2D; 
using System.Xml.Serialization; 
using NinjaTrader.Cbi; 
using NinjaTrader.Data; 
using NinjaTrader.Indicator; 
using NinjaTrader.Gui.Chart; 
using NinjaTrader.Strategy; 
#endregion 
 
namespace NinjaTrader.Strategy 
{ 
public class DIALONGT2S2Index35IndexDate20130313: Strategy
{ 
#region Variables 
 
#endregion 
protected override void Initialize() 
{ 
CalculateOnBarClose = true; 
} 
 
protected override void OnBarUpdate() 
{ 
if ( High[0] > High[1] &&  High[2] > Low[0] && High[1] > High[2] && Low[0] > Low[1] && High[3] > Low[2] && Low[1] > High[3] && Low[2] > Low[3] && Low[3] > Close[4] )
{
EnterLong(DefaultQuantity, "Long");
SetStopLoss("Long", CalculationMode.Percent,2*0.01, false);
SetProfitTarget("Long", CalculationMode.Percent,2*0.01);
}
}
 #region Properties
 
  #endregion 
}
}
 
//Code ends here

This works fine in NT7.

October 19th, 2015, 06:22 AM

NT8 is in public beta, so you can download it now. The code you show is not hard to convert, but I don't know if they will convert it for you.

October 24th, 2015, 12:08 PM

NJAMC

With the public release of NT8, the Forum might get confusing as to which platform they are looking for programming help. I am starting this thread to help keep NT8 issues separate from NT7.

NT8 Now allows & Supports the following NinjaScript Type (FEEL THE POWER):

AddOns
BarsTypes
ChartStyles
DrawingTools
ImportTypes
Indicators
MarketAnalyzerColumns
OptimizationFitnesses
Optimizers
PerformanceMetrics
ShareServices
Strategies
SuperDomColumns

Given these features, there is very little you cannot do with NT8. I think we are going to see some clever solutions to some difficult problems come out of this new platform with the skills of the community.

This Thread I would like to put in place to help facilitate getting answers to questions:

How to?
Will it?
Best Practice?
XAML?
What is the best way?

Since NT8 is still beta, there's a lot of work on NinjaScript to be done, acknowledged by the NT staff in their forums. AddOns in particular are not very well explained. There's basic examples on their help page about how to create tabbed windows, but not much else.

XAML is still a work in progress according to NT, they only support "loose" XAML, and you can't edit XAML within Visual Studio so I've read as it add Windows specific elements to the XAML that won't run in NT.

So far, I've found the best way to edit scripts is via Visual Studio since I am used to that IDE. However, if you have to manually create XAML files to add controls, that's going to suck. Maybe NT will change that before the final release.

October 24th, 2015, 12:16 PM

dryg

Is NT8 out already? Will they offer script translations from NT7? I use NT7 and after spending so much time to learn it I hope they will support it.

NT8 is still beta, no release date yet. There's a lot of code changes in NT8 (I am too new to add a link, Google 'code breaking changes ninjatrader' and look for the result to their forum). The biggest is that NT8 moved to WPF which changed a lot of the method calls and properties from NT7.

A lot of scripts won't work unless they are modified to run in NT8. NT staff is helping in the NT forums, you could try there if you have specific questions.

October 24th, 2015, 12:25 PM

A friend of mine has attached an auto-conversion script in the NinjaTrader Forum.
Here's a script to convert indicators and strategies - [AUTOLINK]NinjaTrader[/AUTOLINK] Support Forum

It might be useful.

October 24th, 2015, 06:36 PM

Thanks for all the info! Great submission.

NT8 Programming Help/Advice/Best Practices

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NT8 Programming Help/Advice/Best Practices