Bars in seconds

[pman777]

Hi, I need to find out how long a bar is in seconds. I'm using renko bars. Is there a function that can do this for me? tx

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

pman777, there would not be a default function, you would need to take the difference of the bar timestamps and convert to seconds, C# offers a convenient TimeSpan struct for this job - http://www.dotnetperls.com/timespan

Alternatively as starting point you could check into this study from our sharing - http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/f...d=1&linkid=230

[pman777]

thanks Bertrand! I will look into those resources. Another related question ... how do I know when a new renko bar has started so I can reset my elapse time counter to start tracking the new bar? Sorry if this is obvious but having an issue figuring this out ... thanks again!

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

You would go off the Time[0] reference which will give you the timestamp of the current most processed bar, this will update automatically if a new bar starts forming, thus it would update any calculations as well that you base of that. If you process in CalculateOnBarClose = false, then FirstTickOfBar would give you the start of the new bar directly.

[pman777]

I'm making progress ... but one more question

Here's my current code:
if (FirstTickOfBar) barStartTime = DateTime.Now;
barElapsedTime = (DateTime.Now-barStartTime).TotalSeconds;
SecondBar.Set(barElapsedTime);

This is working fine but it only calculates the elapse time of the current bar. How can I get it to calculate the same for prior bars?

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

You would not want to base it off DateTime.Now for the historical bars, since that would be your current PC clock. Which could not server as a reference for history but only the current moment. You will need to work with Time[x] to access the historical timestamps of the bars for your task.