Sierra Chart toolbar modifications

June 10th, 2012, 09:21 PM

@ktrade, I was wondering - do you think it is possible to modify the toolbar (menu bar) of Sierra, like what is popularly done with Ninja these last few years?

Initial idea is mainly to add buttons - like toggle switches for hide on/off indicators.

Mike

June 11th, 2012, 12:16 PM

Big Mike

@ktrade, I was wondering - do you think it is possible to modify the toolbar (menu bar) of Sierra, like what is popularly done with Ninja these last few years?

Initial idea is mainly to add buttons - like toggle switches for hide on/off indicators.

Mike

Yes, I believe something along those lines is possible. Although we would need to thread carefully as there are frequent updates to sierra so when modifying things outside the published api might break in future releases.

Also, a study can define 4 toolbar buttons through the api, but they will belong to the study, meaning more general functionality would not be possible.

--ktrader

June 11th, 2012, 05:57 PM

ktrader

Yes, I believe something along those lines is possible. Although we would need to thread carefully as there are frequent updates to sierra so when modifying things outside the published api might break in future releases.

Also, a study can define 4 toolbar buttons through the api, but they will belong to the study, meaning more general functionality would not be possible.

--ktrader

And I want to clarify because my terminology may be wrong...

I use undocked charts only. So I am NOT talking about the main Sierra "toolbar" (as they call it). I am instead talking about each undocked chart window, the menubar of that window (Edit, Tools) having some buttons added to the right to control some stuff, like switching on/off studies or a nice one would be sharing a chart (ftp) etc.

Mike

June 12th, 2012, 03:55 PM

Big Mike

And I want to clarify because my terminology may be wrong...

I use undocked charts only. So I am NOT talking about the main Sierra "toolbar" (as they call it). I am instead talking about each undocked chart window, the menubar of that window (Edit, Tools) having some buttons added to the right to control some stuff, like switching on/off studies or a nice one would be sharing a chart (ftp) etc.

Mike

Something like the attached screenshot?

June 13th, 2012, 12:07 AM

ktrader

Something like the attached screenshot?

Yup. Was thinking right-justified, but yes.

Doesn't even have to be icons, can just be buttons if easier.

Mike

June 13th, 2012, 11:59 AM

Big Mike

Yup. Was thinking right-justified, but yes.

Doesn't even have to be icons, can just be buttons if easier.

Mike

They can be right justified too . Icons are the same difficulty - the screenshot is an actual screenshot of my sierra so they are already there (the background blitting, is off by a pixel so it looks odd - but its possible to fix (thats why the icons background are a bit off - the whole mess is because the bitmaps can not be transparent here, so i copy the backbackgroup draw the icon and put the bitmap back, but is off by a pixel) - also as you might notice the menubar is higher than normal, to fit the 32x32 icons - but any size is ofcourse possible if it is prefered to keep the menubar the original size.

What kind of functionality did you have in mind to attach to these buttons , the one I made and took the screen shot off, switches the chart symbol between 4 currency futures.

--ktrader

June 13th, 2012, 12:03 PM

ktrader

They can be right justified too . Icons are the same difficulty - the screenshot is an actual screenshot of my sierra so they are already there (the background blitting, is off by a pixel so it looks odd - but its possible to fix (thats why the icons background are a bit off - the whole mess is because the bitmaps can not be transparent here, so i copy the backbackgroup draw the icon and put the bitmap back, but is off by a pixel) - also as you might notice the menubar is higher than normal, to fit the 32x32 icons - but any size is ofcourse possible if it is prefered to keep the menubar the original size.

What kind of functionality did you have in mind to attach to these buttons , the one I made and took the screen shot off, switches the chart symbol between 4 currency futures.

--ktrader

A shortcut to the Edit - Screen Images - Upload with Overlays would be nice.

I'd also like buttons to turn on/off indicators (hide them), if it is possible to tie a button to a specific indicator # that would be nice.

Shortcut buttons to change chart templates (Analysis -> template) to a predefined template.

I am sure others can come up with great ideas.

Mike

June 13th, 2012, 12:13 PM

Can you provide example code of how you made the buttons? I would like to be able to make my own chart trader.

June 13th, 2012, 12:17 PM

Big Mike

A shortcut to the Edit - Screen Images - Upload with Overlays would be nice.

I'd also like buttons to turn on/off indicators (hide them), if it is possible to tie a button to a specific indicator # that would be nice.

Shortcut buttons to change chart templates (Analysis -> template) to a predefined template.

I am sure others can come up with great ideas.

Mike

It sounds like it would be best to define a generic way to add buttons and hook it into calling functions in sierra, either through the api or by making lower levels hooks into sierra - so we get a more customizable solution.

I will try to make an initiel version that displays the different handles we can attach to in sierra and then we can hopefully get some ideas and input to how it is best utilized.

--ktrader

June 13th, 2012, 01:19 PM

vegasfoster

Can you provide example code of how you made the buttons? I would like to be able to make my own chart trader.

Sure...

they are not actually buttons in this case, but I had to make them as menu-items as they went to the menu-bar:

To get the menu i get the window handle of the chart-window inside the study (this is for detached charts)

Code

HWND hwnd = sc.ChartWindowHandle;

then i get the main menu:

Code

HMENU menu = GetMenu(hwnd);

then i add the 4 menu-items as bitmap items:

Code

		MENUINFO menuinfo;
		GetMenuInfo(menu,&menuinfo);
		menuinfo.cyMax=36;
		menuinfo.fMask |= MIM_MAXHEIGHT;
		SetMenuInfo(menu,&menuinfo);

		h= LoadImage(NULL, L"c:\\img\\usd.bmp", IMAGE_BITMAP, 0, 0, LR_LOADFROMFILE|LR_LOADTRANSPARENT);
		AppendMenu(menu,MF_BITMAP,103992,(LPCWSTR) h);
		h= LoadImage(NULL, L"c:\\img\\eur.bmp", IMAGE_BITMAP, 0, 0, LR_LOADFROMFILE);
		AppendMenu(menu,MF_BITMAP,103993,(LPCWSTR) h);
		h= LoadImage(NULL, L"c:\\img\\gbp.bmp", IMAGE_BITMAP, 0, 0, LR_LOADFROMFILE);
		AppendMenu(menu,MF_BITMAP,103994,(LPCWSTR) h);
		h= LoadImage(NULL, L"c:\\img\\yen.bmp", IMAGE_BITMAP, 0, 0, LR_LOADFROMFILE|LR_LOADTRANSPARENT);
		AppendMenu(menu,MF_BITMAP,103995,(LPCWSTR) h);

I just load the icons from my disk as it makes it easier to change for me

, you can also have them as resources directly in your dll.

notice you would need to check if you already added something for, a very simple check would be the menu item count:

Code

int x=GetMenuItemCount(menu);

Notice I gave my menu items id's 103992-103995, i just chose them arbitrarily as numbers not conflicting with sierra.

To be able to listen if anyone pressed your menu items you would need to hook into the message loop by:

Code

	if (hook==NULL && hwnd!=NULL) {
		unsigned long processID = 0;
		GetWindowThreadProcessId(hwnd, &processID);
		hook =SetWindowsHookEx(WH_CALLWNDPROC ,&CallWndProc,inst,GetCurrentThreadId());
		if (hook==NULL) {
			sc.AddMessageToLog("hook not installed",0);
		} else {
			sc.AddMessageToLog("hook installed",0);
		}
}

When a menu item is selected you would get WM_COMMAND so your CallWndProc would need to listen to this:

Code

LRESULT CALLBACK CallWndProc(int code,WPARAM wParam,LPARAM lParam) {
	if (code<0) {
		return CallNextHookEx(0,code,wParam,lParam);
	}

	CWPSTRUCT* msg = (CWPSTRUCT*) lParam;
	switch (msg->message) {
		case WM_COMMAND:
			// check if it one of your buttons here. Also you might want to check if its the right hwnd
		break;

	}
	return CallNextHookEx(hook,code,wParam,lParam);
}

As this requires you to keep some data outside of sierra I would have my own datastructures in the dll, to keep track of which windows i have buttons in (and thus not use the study's capabailities of storing data).

you also need to unhook your wndproc hook when you are done.

Code

UnhookWindowsHookEx(hook);

Also, a sierra study is a normal dll, so you can do some initialization and other things as normal in DLLMain:

Code

static HINSTANCE inst;

BOOL WINAPI DllMain( HINSTANCE hinstDLL,DWORD fdwReason,LPVOID lpvReserved) {
	switch (fdwReason) {
	case DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH:
		inst = hinstDLL;
		break;
	}
	return TRUE;

}

I just choose to save dll instance in a static instance, as it will only be loaded once. You could choose to clean up, if you had saved all the structures "yourself" (as oppose to save them with the study) when you are detached.

Another, much simpler way, would be to use the built-in capabilities to add 4 buttons pr study to a study toolbar, but they dont give you the same degree of flexibility, but you can have buttons and get notified when they are pressed directly in the study.

--ktrader

Sierra Chart toolbar modifications

Discussion in Sierra Chart

Sierra Chart toolbar modifications