Issue: Specifying a custom bar type as the value of a indicator property

[strategesis]

How is one supposed to have a user specify a custom bar type as the value of an indicator or strategy property? Custom bar types are not formally part of the BarsPeriodType enumeration, and so don't appear in the list of selectable values in a property dialog for a property of type BarsPeriodType. The user certainly has no way to do it, and it's a hard problem for a coder unless he knows the integer codes of all the bar types he intends to support (perhaps because he will only be using his own custom bar types.)

One could use a property of type integer instead (and cast the integer when and as necessary,) but that's very user unfriendly. How will a user know which integer value to use for any bar type, let alone for custom ones? How could the developer know what custom bar types there might be, and what their integer codes are, in order to provide help for the user?

One solution would be to provide a mapping service that maps between bar type names and bar type integer codes (for both built-in and custom bar types,) and also a way to enumerate the names of all installed bar types.

[NinjaTrader_ZacharyG]

Hello strategesis,

Thank you for your inquiry.

To utilize a custom bar type when using AddDataSeries(), for example, you would need to utilize the integer value of the bar type and cast it to BarsPeriodType.

Example:

AddDataSeries((BarsPeriodType)14, 1);

Unfortunately, that is currently the only way a custom bar type can be used in this regard.

As you have stated in your post, you could use a property of type int to allow the user to enter in a value to correspond with a specific bar type.

The numerical value for the bar type can be found in the bar type's BarsPeriod property.

I have submitted your feedback to the product management team. We highly value customer feedback to improve NinjaTrader!

[strategesis]

"The numerical value for the bar type can be found in the bar type's BarsPeriod property."

Yes. Having developed my own bar types for NT8, I was aware of that. And if I'm simply using one of my own bar types, that solution works.

Here's the issue: I make my indicators available to customers. I have no idea what bar types they might be using. Most of them are not programmers--and even if one of them happens to be such, he may nevertheless be unable to examine the source code for one or more of the bar types he uses that reside in DLLs, instead of residing as human-readable source code in the BarsTypes folder.

Don't you think that's a problem?

How would you recommend it be resolved?

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

There is a BarsPeriodTypeConverter we will be exposing in B7 which will work as a property editor to include custom bars types - NTEIGHT-9028