Excel VBA and ATI

[Elevator2TheTop]

Brand new to Excel VBA. I am trying to automate trading strategies via Excel. I created VBA code as below.

Private Declare PtrSafe Function CashValue Lib "D:\NinjaTrader 8\bin\NinjaTrader.Client.DLL" (ByVal lpAccountName As String) As Double

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()

Dim dbCashValue As Double
dbCashValue = CashValue("")
Range("A1").Value = dbCashValue

End Sub

When I click on CommandButton1, it stops on the line "dbCashValue = CashValue(""), and I get an error msg (see attached).

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[NinjaTrader_BrandonH]

Hello Elevator2TheTop,

Thanks for your post.

Automating NinjaScripts via Excel goes beyond the support we would be able to provide you with in the Support department.

Note that NinjaScript strategies use the C# programming language version 4.8 for NinjaScript development.

That said, this forum thread will be open for other community members to share their insights on unsupported code that you may find helpful.

Let me know if you have further questions.

[Elevator2TheTop]

NinjaTrader_BrandonH Thanks for the reply Brandon. Can you confirm if the ATI interface is working in NT 8.1.1.3? The ATI is designed to integrate with other tools, so does the Dev team expect the DLL to work with VBA? If not, what dev tools are supported with the DLL? If you tell me that the Dev team expects the DLL to work in VBA, then I will get someone else to help me. If the Dev team says VBA is not supported, then tell me which tools are supported. Thank you!

[NinjaTrader_BrandonH]

Hello Elevator2TheTop,

Thanks for your note.

The NTDirect.dll (unmanaged) API is no longer supported for use in NinjaTrader 8.1 and has been discontinued.

The API is still available with the .NET managed assembly NinjaTrader.Client.dll. Further, the ATI is still available through the Email and Order-Instruction-File approaches.

Below is a link to a forum post discussion on the API.
https://ninjatrader.com/support/foru...626#post793626

Support for the API is limited from NinjaTrader Support. We are not able to assist with any code in an application external to NinjaTrader. We are able to detail the usage of any methods available from the API.

Below I am providing a publicly available link to the help guide that lists the functions available to the API.

Help Guide NT8 API functions - http://ninjatrader.com/support/helpG..._interface.htm

On the forum, you can ask other developers in the community if anyone has tips for unsupported external application code.

Please let us know if we may assist further.

[Elevator2TheTop]

NinjaTrader_BrandonH Hi Brandon, can you please confirm with the Development team that NinjaTrader.Client.dll is supported in VBA? The question that everyone keeps asking me -- is the DLL supported in VBA. I don't know what to tell them, because I am not familiar with how the DLL was developed. I know you can't help me with the programming, but your development team should be able to answer if it is designed to run in VBA.

Thank you....

[NinjaTrader_ChelseaB]

Hello Elevator2TheTop,

While no specific application is supported with the API, and the API was not designed for any specific application or language other than C#, we can verify that any .NET 4.8 application should be able to use the API.

Unfortunately, we would not be able to verify that VBA is specifically able to use the API.

[QuantKey_Bruce]

Most likely it should be possible because I believe VBA can use .NET DLLs in general but doing this from VBA sounds like a bad design decision from a reliability standpoint. You would probably be a lot better to do the coding inside of NinjaTrader and maybe pull the information you need out of your Excel file if there's something in there you need. Excel tends to get quite unreliable under pressure.