Can MT4 interface to Excel/Java/.NET/??? for interactive GUI control?

Hi all,

I have a big problem with doing so much manual entry of trendlines and fibo channels on my charts. I will draw fibos on one chart but want them on another and (I think) I have no alternative but to just draw them again.

Yes I could save the fibo chart and trendlines as a template, but if I load that template onto another chart, doesn't it blow away whatever else is there? (trendlines, other fibos, etc.)

I draw a zillion trendlines by hand, but over time, only a few of them are key ones I want to keep. Same with fibos, although not nearly as many. I'd like to see a trendline I draw in one timeframe appear in another chart with a different timeframe, yet snapped to the same high or low.

I haven't really worked with many auto-trendline or auto-fibo drawing tools. I would appreciate references to any particularly good ones that you may know about.

However the problem with any "auto" tool will be that I won't agree with all the choices it makes. I want the ability to manually override or supplement the choices.


Hence, the following idea...

Suppose I had an MT4 program that goes and gets major points (highs and lows on various timeframes). Then through some API (advanced programming interface?) to _some_ tool, I get to see them as a list. Each point gets a "name". I can imagine a GUI (graphical user interface) with a boolean checkbox to enable/disable any given point.

Significantly, I can begin to choose pairs of points to use for trendlines and/or fibos. Now I have control over which points and what I do with them.

Furthermore, if my external GUI tool can talk to any chart on MT4, then I can automatically display the trendlines/fibos and ANY of my charts without manually drawing them.

1. First things first...

I'd like help to just get MT4 to draw trendlines and fibos from a pure text file. I will give it a specific time, and I want a program to go find the min/max of that timeframe. That establishes a "point" and a more specific time. (It would be nice if an auto-high-low tool could output an initial list for me to start with too).

Does anyone have an example of MT4 reading such data from a CSV or other kind of text file?


2. An extension to the first, anybody have a way to read the points from Excel, or another database, instead of a text file?


3. Any ideas on what language and/or API would best be suited for this task?


4. Possible resource who could program this? I'm just a hacker, not a formal programmer, although I have put together some impressive stuff -- given enough time -- just by being persistent.

5. Know of any great auto-trendline or auto-fibo tools that identify the min and max points fairly well?


Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me!

Pips4life

I'll address each of your questions in turn, but I want you to know that what you're looking to do is not trivial.


Does anyone have an example of MT4 reading such data from a CSV or other kind of text file?
Sure, this part is easy. Take a look at the file functions. Getting data to/from a csv is going to be the easy part.

An extension to the first, anybody have a way to read the points from Excel, or another database, instead of a text file?
Now it's getting harder. MT4 doesn't have an API that you can write against. You can get data out of MT4 using DDE, but to get data in, you're stuck either reading files or using a dll. To read an excel file directly, you'd have to decipher the file format. Or... did you know that excel can easily open/modify a csv file? The csv file is probably your common ground here.

Any ideas on what language and/or API would best be suited for this task?
If you want to programmatically interface with excel, I think you're stuck writing a Win32 dll. That means you're writing in C++, Object Pascal or the like.

Possible resource who could program this? I'm just a hacker, not a formal programmer, although I have put together some impressive stuff -- given enough time -- just by being persistent.
Time is a more precious resource for me right now than money is, I'd have to charge a heck of alot to take on something as time consuming as this.

Know of any great auto-trendline or auto-fibo tools that identify the min and max points fairly well?
Nope, but this part can probably be written in MT4 based on custom fractals.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me!
Not a problem.


Here's something that's not as elegant, but which would be MUCH easier to code. For the objects that you'd like to be "portable", tag them in some way (specific text in description field, special color, etc.). Write a script to identify them via the tag and write them to a csv file. Write another script to read the file and recreate objects on the chart. Voila, you've got portable objects.

Hi all,

I'm looking for a way to create a GUI on the chart where I can assign a script to a button. Currently I assigned Hotkey to each scripts (10 scripts for 10 keys). It's very cumbersome to execute them because I could hit the wrong key or confuse with other keys.

Could someone with programming knowledge help me create a GUI and link the buttons to the scripts? Thanks.