How do I access *.chr files from a indicator/EA

Hi Folks,

I am new MT4 programmers and am trying to identify the correct/current chartNN.chr file based on my selected chart and then open this file and read/manipulate the data in the file.

Can anyone help with guidance on the procedure or instructions on how to do this.

Thks.

You can access any file from within an MT4 EA/indicator by using the FileOpen() statement, and then read the data using FileReadString() (for text files) or FileReadInteger() or FileReadDouble() to access integer or floating point values from a binary file. Use the on-line help within MetaEditor, or look here, for detailed info.

As far as I know, the .CHR files exist under the ..../<MT4 broker name>/profiles folder, and are in a XML-like (text) format. The records in the file (e.g. bullcandle_color=, askline=, etc) are fairly self-explanatory.

Thks for the reply, but how do I identify which .chr file is for the current selected chart.

OK in my MT4 profile I have 13 charts open for one currency pair all showing different TF and unique views.

But I want to code an indicator/EA to access a specific chartXX.chr coz they have 13 .chr files in the profile directory (chart01.chr to chart13.chr), and/or how do I know which chartXX.chr contains info on the selected chart ?

You see I do not know which 01 to 13 .chr is for which chart.

I know that the ...01 ID is the first chart opened/created in the profile and ...13 is the last chart created. But I may have ...05 highhlighted looking at now, so I want my indicator to open chart05.chr. So how do I know that this chart I am looking at corresponds to the chart05.chr ?


Understand ? thks for your response.

Sorry, I don't have experience processing .CHR files.

However, to determine which file matches which chart, you could check for text within the file itself. For example, the first entries within the file are generally something like:
<chart>
symbol=CADJPY
period=60
Hence when your EA reads this, it would know that this file corresponds to an H1 chart.

To remove all possible ambiguity, you could also create a unique identifier within each chart, e.g. a text object with description ##Chart A## in your first chart, ##Chart B## in your second chart, and so on. Then your EA would search the file until it finds that unique string. (Set the text object's color=None to make it invisible on your chart).

However, I just experimented with adding some indicators and objects to a chart, and the .CHR file didn't get updated to reflect these, until I exited MT4.

Also, I noticed that Chart01.CHR, Chart02.CHR, etc correspond with the left-to-right order that the charts appear on the 'Charts Bar' near the bottom of the screen. I dragged these left and right to change the order, and once again, the .CHR files were not updated to reflect this, until I exited MT4.

So my guess is that the data in these files gets loaded when MT4 is started (i.e. to ensure that the profile view is the same when MT4 was last exited). Then all changes are stored internally, and then saved back into the files when MT4 is exited once again.

Sorry I can't be of more help.