How to use existing indicator inside custom indicator

[westofpluto]

I wish to use the ATR indicator inside my custom indicator. Note that I do NOT want to plot the ATR - I just want to use the ATR data series inside my own indicator to perform some calculations. My custom indicator will have only a single plot and the value that is plotted is computed using data from the ATR.

I suspect I have to do several things like:
have the proper "using" to import whatever package has the ATR
initialize the ATR or declare it somehow
use it in my calculations

How do I do these? Is there an example somewhere?

[NinjaTrader_PaulH]

Hello westofpluto,

Thanks for your post.

In its simplest form you could use it directly in OnBarUpDate() like this:

double myATRValue = ATR(14)[0]; // get the current bar 14 periodATR value

We recommend in best practices to create a private instance of the indicator as each time it is used like above it will add an instance so if you had 6 lines like that it would add 6 instances.

Please see the help guide example " Referencing indicator methods" here: https://ninjatrader.com/support/help...tm#Performance

[westofpluto]

Ok thanks, I declared a member variable "private ATR atr" and in State.DataLoaded I declared "atr = ATR(Close,14)" So far so good.

Next question: what if I want to use my own custom indicator? For example, if I have one custom indicator called "Custom1" and my second custom indicator "Custom2" needs to use the values from Custom1. How do I load one custom indicator into another?
Thanks.

[NinjaTrader_PaulH]

Hello westofpluto,

Thanks for your reply.

It would be exactly the same to use any indicator.

Create a private instance, initialize in state.Dataloaded and then access the private instance in OnBarUpdate().