Vendor License operation - when/how expireation of a product takes place

[xmess777]

Hi, recently a client started using the Vendor License tool to setup and control strategy product time limits. free trial etc etc. No issues with this, it works fine but we experienced a discrepancy.

In our testing.. we attempted to verify that once he declared the product expired on his side that I, on my side, would see it stop working. That did not exactly happen like that. What we expierenced was that as long as I left the ninjatrader platform on the expired strategy would continue operating. It wasn't until I unloaded ninatrader that then I could not use it, cause I would get the message that the strategy had expired. We didn't try waiting longer (like next day) to see if the strategy would stop working. Please advice. The thinking here is that if a user leaves his plaform on indefinitely (think vps) then they will be able to continue using the strategy which defeats the purpose.

Given that this occured, is there a way that we can interact programatically with the License code function?? For example perhaps the the function VendorLicense() can return a varaible that in turn we can use later on in our code to automatically unload the strategy and inform the user that the strategy is expired,

Please advice.
Jess

[bltdavid]

Why not repeat just the license check every Midnight?

If the license check fails due to license expire, disable
the strategy.

Problem solved.

[xmess777]

Why not repeat just the license check every Midnight?

If the license check fails due to license expire, disable
the strategy.

Problem solved.

Good idea, but, how does one check the expiration via code? Do u mean create code that will detect if the strategy is running at or after the expration date? So then how does one obtain programatically the expiration date from the Vendor License function??

Perhaps I wasnt clear on my explanation. Here's a more simpler example.

I the cleint get a strategy that is set to expire say Nov 30,2024. I Add it to my ninjatrader and activet it.
The owner then expires my copy, they set the expiration to Octo 30, 2024. As long as I don't turn off my ninjtrader I continue to see the strategy running, instead of it stopping.

From the programming point of view I don't see how I can write code to detect what the expiration date is. There are two ways I could do it.
1. Hard code the expiration date,,, not practical
2. Use ZeroMq library and create publisher/client link tthat gives me client the ability to communicate with the strategy via the network. The strategy can now receive messages from my clients machine and we can have it expire whenever we need to.
a. Users require to do extra installations in order to ZeroMq to work. (I have already asked this question and support indicated that there was no real way fo bundle the library for install
purposes).
b. Not neccesary in that supposedly the License Script is supposed to take care of this.


Thnx
Jess

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello Jess,

Thank you for your post.

If you require further information, please reach out to us at vendorsupport[at]ninjatrader[dot]com.

Hi, recently a client started using the Vendor License tool to setup and control strategy product time limits. free trial etc etc. No issues with this, it works fine but we experienced a discrepancy.

In our testing.. we attempted to verify that once he declared the product expired on his side that I, on my side, would see it stop working. That did not exactly happen like that. What we expierenced was that as long as I left the ninjatrader platform on the expired strategy would continue operating. It wasn't until I unloaded ninatrader that then I could not use it, cause I would get the message that the strategy had expired. We didn't try waiting longer (like next day) to see if the strategy would stop working. Please advice. The thinking here is that if a user leaves his plaform on indefinitely (think vps) then they will be able to continue using the strategy which defeats the purpose.

Given that this occured, is there a way that we can interact programatically with the License code function?? For example perhaps the the function VendorLicense() can return a varaible that in turn we can use later on in our code to automatically unload the strategy and inform the user that the strategy is expired,

Please advice.
Jess

[xmess777]

Hello Jess,

Thank you for your post.

If you require further information, please reach out to us at vendorsupport[at]ninjatrader[dot]com.

Thank you. Will give them a shout.
Jess