I am having a ball importing DLLs | Forex Factory

Options

Permalinks
Print Thread

Similar Threads

Creating Metatrader DLLs with Lazarus / Free Pascal 104 replies

Importing live data into excel? 19 replies

FreePascal DLLs for JMA, EMA, SMA indicators 0 replies

Strategy tester, DLLs, and FreeLibrary() 1 reply

Having MT4 on two computer and having to REDO stuff 16 replies

I am having a ball importing DLLs

  • #1
  • First Post: Sep 5, 2008 6:46pm Sep 5, 2008 6:46pm
After several months of hitting brick wall after brick wall, I am finally getting some success importing DLLs into my MQ4 code. It is very satisfying.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is precious little info on Google about coding DLLs, let alone importing them into MQ4. (I found one tutorial, but that was a daunting to a newb like me. It did give me some crucial info about accomplishing this, though.)

There is a freeware program called "DLL Export Viewer" that will show you all DLLs loaded into Windows at the time you run it. It shows all function calls you can make to every DLL in memory, including the DLL's name!

So if your MQ4 needs a function already loaded in Windows, its simply a matter of importing that DLL and calling the function. YEAH!
  • #2
  • Sep 5, 2008 11:24pm Sep 5, 2008 11:24pm
This is WAY over my head..... guess thats why I run a MAC....
Same Whore .... Different Dress
  • #3
  • Sep 6, 2008 2:16am Sep 6, 2008 2:16am
Quoting tdion
After several months of hitting brick wall after brick wall, I am finally getting some success importing DLLs into my MQ4 code. It is very satisfying.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is precious little info on Google about coding DLLs, let alone importing them into MQ4. (I found one tutorial, but that was a daunting to a newb like me. It did give me some crucial info about accomplishing this, though.)

There is a freeware program called "DLL Export Viewer" that will show you all DLLs loaded into Windows at the time you run it. It shows all function calls you can make to every DLL in memory, including the DLL's name!

So if your MQ4 needs a function already loaded in Windows, its simply a matter of importing that DLL and calling the function. YEAH!

Cool tip!
  • #4
  • Sep 6, 2008 3:08pm Sep 6, 2008 3:08pm
When making your own DLL, you'll find that a lot of compilers will put "decorations" onto the functions names by default, and you can indeed use this program to figure out what the compiler has done.

However, many compilers (C/C++ compilers at least) will have an option some place to control fairly precisely what your exported function names will be. You might need to dig a bit though your documentation to locate the options, however.
  • #5
  • Sep 6, 2008 3:23pm Sep 6, 2008 3:23pm
Quoting tdion
After several months of hitting brick wall after brick wall, I am finally getting some success importing DLLs into my MQ4 code. It is very satisfying.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is precious little info on Google about coding DLLs, let alone importing them into MQ4. (I found one tutorial, but that was a daunting to a newb like me. It did give me some crucial info about accomplishing this, though.)

There is a freeware program called "DLL Export Viewer" that will show you all DLLs loaded into Windows at the time you run it. It shows all function calls you can make to every DLL in memory, including the DLL's name!

So if your MQ4 needs a function already loaded in Windows, its simply a matter of importing that DLL and calling the function. YEAH!
May I ask what kind of DLLs are you importing into MQL? ie what purpose?
  • #6
  • Sep 6, 2008 3:30pm Sep 6, 2008 3:30pm
I've been after a "file last modified" function....
  • #7
  • Sep 6, 2008 6:37pm Sep 6, 2008 6:37pm
It is pretty amazing how versatile MT4 can be.
  • #8
  • Last Post: Sep 6, 2008 9:11pm Sep 6, 2008 9:11pm
Quoting tdion
After several months of hitting brick wall after brick wall, I am finally getting some success importing DLLs into my MQ4 code. It is very satisfying.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is precious little info on Google about coding DLLs, let alone importing them into MQ4. (I found one tutorial, but that was a daunting to a newb like me. It did give me some crucial info about accomplishing this, though.)

There is a freeware program called "DLL Export Viewer" that will show you all DLLs loaded into Windows at the time you run it. It shows all function calls you can make to every DLL in memory, including the DLL's name!

So if your MQ4 needs a function already loaded in Windows, its simply a matter of importing that DLL and calling the function. YEAH!
The only problem I had with DLLs was passing strings back to an EA. The key was to pass the string from the EA appropriatelly and allocate some space for the string which MT4 doesn't do by default e.g. when calling my DLL function in the EA: (the last parameter is something I get back from the DLL)
FunctionName(sTimeCur, 1, Cur1, Cur1, sRet[0]);
the declaration in C++ VS2005:
MT4_EXPFUNC void__stdcall FunctionName(LPSTR sCurTime, BOOL bTest, LPSTR sCurrency1, LPSTR sCurrency2, LPSTR sRet)

for the above you also need:
#define MT4_EXPFUNC __declspec(dllexport)
0 traders viewing now