Named Pipes for MT4

Quoting sangmane

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hi sf,

here is an example on sending data from excel to metatrader via named pipe. run pipeserver script on mt4, open the attached excel file, enable macro. type your message, press enter and click [Send] button. your message will be instantly printed on mt4 chart. in real application, you can change pipeserver.mq4 code to parse the message from excel to do some trading related task.

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Quoting sangmane

Disliked

hi sf,

here is an example on sending data from excel to metatrader via named pipe. run pipeserver script on mt4, open the attached excel file, enable macro. type your message, press enter and click [Send] button. your message will be instantly printed on mt4 chart. in real application, you can change pipeserver.mq4 code to parse the message from excel to do some trading related task.

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Quoting sangmane

Disliked

hi sf,

here is an example on sending data from excel to metatrader via named pipe. run pipeserver script on mt4, open the attached excel file, enable macro. type your message, press enter and click [Send] button. your message will be instantly printed on mt4 chart. in real application, you can change pipeserver.mq4 code to parse the message from excel to do some trading related task.

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Quoting sangmane

Disliked

I want to thank to 4xcoder for starting this thread and giving a direction at how to implement named pipe w/o using custom dll.

After browsing Windows SDK, I've managed to code two scripts (by porting some example in C language to mql4). These two scripts work in a client-server scheme. The terms server doesn't mean it has to be in remote machine.

The scripts itself is surprisingly simple

PipeServer script work by create a pipe instance, entering a while loop and waiting for client (PipeClient script) connecting to the just created pipe.
After...

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Quoting Progressing

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Codemeister,

Thanks for the swift response. Yes I am considering that although there will be a plethora of API's to navigate !

The other thing I omitted to mention is that I need to be able to talk back to MT4 - to place orders, request account balance etc. So perhaps:

Data:
MT4 -> DDE -> App

Order / Info Requests:
MT4 -> Named Pipes -> App (and back)

What do you think ?

Thanks in advance,

Progressing.

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#define GENERIC_READ  0x80000000
#define GENERIC_WRITE  0x40000000
#define OPEN_EXISTING  3
int Buffersize = 512;

#import "kernel32.dll"

   int CreateNamedPipe(string pipeName, int openMode, int pipeMode, int maxInstances, int outBufferSize, int inBufferSize, int defaultTimeOut, int security );
   int WaitNamedPipeA( string lpNamedPipeName, int nTimeOut );
   bool PeekNamedPipe( int pipeHandle, int& buffer[], int bufferSize, int& bytesRead[], int& totalBytesAvail[], int& bytesLeftThisMessage[] );
   int CreateFileA( string name, int desiredAccess, int SharedMode, int security, int creation, int flags, int templateFile );
   int WriteFile( int fileHandle, string buffer, int bytes, int& numOfBytes[], int overlapped );
   int ReadFile( int fileHandle, int& buffer[], int bytes, int& numOfBytes[], int overlapped );
   int CloseHandle( int fileHandle );
   int GetError();

#import

Quote

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int init()...

int init()
  {
   
   string Pipename = "\.pipemynamedpipe";
   string Testmessage = "T";
   int hPipe;
   int bytesWritten[1];
   bool bsuccess = false;
   
   hPipe = CreateFileA( 
      Pipename,   // pipe name 
      GENERIC_READ |  // read and write access 
      GENERIC_WRITE, 
      0,              // no sharing 
      NULL,           // default security attributes
      OPEN_EXISTING,  // opens existing pipe 
      0,              // default attributes 
      NULL);          // no template file 
 
   bsuccess = WriteFile( 
      hPipe,                  // pipe handle 
      Testmessage,             // message 
      StringLen(Testmessage)+1,     // message length 
      bytesWritten,             // bytes written 
      NULL);
      
   return(0);
  
  }

Quoting sangmane

Disliked

hi sf,

here is an example on sending data from excel to metatrader via named pipe. run pipeserver script on mt4, open the attached excel file, enable macro. type your message, press enter and click [Send] button. your message will be instantly printed on mt4 chart. in real application, you can change pipeserver.mq4 code to parse the message from excel to do some trading related task.

Ignored