Email alert app to send screenshot?

I fixed one thing and broke another.

on the SMTP script i figured out how to import multiple files of *.gif into an array so i can have multiple attachments if required.

Which in turn broke the ability to move the files and pre-pend the names ( which i had working when it was just a single filename ).

For some reason the Filemove function in AutoIT scripting language doesn't like accepting array variables.

The journey continues - but I know i'll get this to work - i'm so close!

OK. I'm stuck

I can't for the life of me figure out how to iterate through the array of file names.

Here is my loop


I know the data is in the array, because the files indeed get emailed. But for some reason it won't let me use the same array to move the files

Should I be putting [$i] at the end of the arguments inside the loop to indicate individual array items? I've tried it, but to no avail.

my brain hurts.


EDIT: OK got it. Tried a different loop and all is now good. What a brain bender!

Nearly there

OK, so I've got it working. Nearly. The script/ INI file do their part perfectly.

I have an ini file you can use for all the settings, including the destination directory you would like for the file once its emailed.

It works fine when I run the compile exe or script directly, however when I call the exe from the ShellExecuteA command in the alerter.mql file, it runs the mailer.exe, but gives errors saying I need at least 1 mail recipient. This makes me think its not finding the INI file, and therefore isn't able to send the email.

I have the INI file in the same dir as the executable.

When using the ShellExecuteA function from shell32.dll in an MQL4 indicator is there a special path or argument I need to give to tell it where the INI file is located? I think that might be the problem.

Anyone have any ideas?

Just in case anyone still cares - I have something that works and it's at a point I'm willing to share for critique.

Attached is a zip file containing:

Alerter.mql - the MT4 indicator that does the alerting and saves a screenshot ( not my code, but adapted from another indicator of same name )
MT4-Mailer.au3 - AutoIT Script that mails the screenshots and saves them to another location
MT4-Mailer.exe - Windows executable version of the above incase you dont want to install the autoIT environment on your PC
Alerter_Mail.INI - INI file with settings to allow you to enter your own email details - all fairly self explanatory

Usage:

Install Alerter.mql in your expertsindicators directory as per a normal indicator
you will want to modify it, by right clicking the indicator in the 'Custom Indicator' window and selecting 'Modify'

the two lines of code you will want to change are:


The WindowScreenShot function saves the file by default in the folder shots which resides in your [MT4Install]expertsfiles folder.
If you want to change the name of that folder ( the shots folder only ), here is where you do it ( but make a note of it if you do )

The ShellExecute command is what calls the external program to actually attach that screenshot and mail it to you.

Change the [YourMT4Install] part of the path to match your MT4Install

NOTE: I have included both the .exe file and the .au3 script file. EITHER can be used here - i.e. if you dont trust running some .exe you don't know, then you can run the script instead...............but you will have to install the www.autoitscript.com environment as well. It's very lightweight, and if you are a tinkerer, then why not, as you will be able change some thigs within that environment too. AutoIT is a scripting language that was originally designed for automating Windows programs/functions, but is also quite versatile.

For running the script instead of the .exe the above ShellExecute line will need to be changed to:

where instead of OPEN we use RUN and the extension becomes .au3.

OK, so once you do that, you have an Alerter file that works like this:

Any horizontal line, rectangle or trendline can be used as an alert level. simply edit the objects description and make it like this: "Alert_10"

that will alert you when bid price is 1 pip away from that object, i.e. Alert_20 will alert when it's 2 pips etc
the original alert would offer either a popup alert with audible sound & an email alert telling you the price level and the object name that was applicable.
You can still leave that on, but now the following also occurs.

At the time of the Alert, the Alerter.Mql file will also take a screenshot at the resolution specified in the 'WindowScreenShot' function. The current default is 1920x1080 - change it to whatever you want.

the file type is PNG, but if you prefer GIF you can also just change the file extension in the WindowScreenShot function.

The filename convention is "Screenshot[CurrencyPair][BidPrice].PNG" If you want to have a tinker with this ( i probably will ) then feel free. This file then get's saved in the [YourMT4Install]expertsfilesshots folder.

then the MT4-AlertMailer gets called.

MT4-AlertMailer.exe or .au3 both use the Alert_Mailer.INI file to get settings for your SMTP mail account, and the directories where the screenshot's are stored, and where you want the sent ones saved. You will need to edit this file before you use these files.

Make sure when you edit the .INI file you change the "Directoryoffiles" key to match whatever directory the WindowScreenShot saves the files in, as this is where MT4-AlertMailer.exe(au3) looks to find the files to attach t your email.
The "WorkingDir" path should be where your MT4-AlertMailer.exe ( or .au3 ) and Alert_Mailer.INI files are ( normalyl in [MT4InstallDir]expertsfiles )
The "DestinationofSent" key is where the files will go when they have been emailed - the files will also be renamed with "SENT" at the front of their filename.
At the moment you should make this a separate directory to the one the original screenshots are saved, otherwise you will have multiple files sent each alert ( i'll get around to fixing this ).

during testing, I had the MT4-AlertMailer.exe & Alert_Mailer.INI files in the [MT4Installdir]expertsfiles folder and suggest you do too ( although it should work anywhere ).

if you do move it, just remember to update the Alerter.mql file to point to the file.

It's far from polished, but it works. Critique, observations, ideas, etc all welcomed. This has been a fun learning experience.

There are loads of things I'd like to add to this and possibly will like:

Ability to change many of the settings in Alerter.mql via a user friendly 'Edit Settings' dialog ( i'll get round to it ).
Ability to have regular pre-set screenshots emailed ( like every xxx minutes )

and I'll think of more

For now, it's very rough..............but it works, love to hear your thoughts


------

Things i learned?

When you run a file as a script directly vs when called via ShellExecuteA completely change the working directory - best to explicitly state what it is in the code to begin with!

iterating through arrays can be tricky

using visual messages to display the values of variables during code executing for testing is a valuable way of debugging!

Much more stuff!



enjoy, feel free to enhance, but please post back here

Congratulations. I bet it feels good, although sometimes its more a feeling of relief than exhiliration.

Yes CodeMeister, it is a great feeling. I still realise I have a lot to learn too! I do have one question for you ( at the end of this post ).

I've made some improvements, and as there seems to be little interest for tool, this I'll probably leave it at this.

Attached is an update of the Alerter.mql indicator.

main change is:

- All email settings can now be configured via the indicator settings ( instead of the INI file
The indy now dynamically creates the INI file with each screenshot. This was done by importing Kernel32.dll and using the Windows API function FileWrite, instead of the limited file writing function within MT4 ( which only lets you write to CSV or BIN files, not TXT or INI files ).

in the settings, simply enter your path to MT4 ( making sure you include the trailing backslash ) i.e. C:\Program Files\MT4folder\
then enter your desired email details, if you don't get the path right ( with trailing backslash ) it won't work.

Please save the MT4-AlerterMailer.exe in your MT4folder\experts\files directory, that is where the script will expect to find it.

Saved screenshots will be stored in your experts\files\shots\sent\ directory.

you may want to 'hard code' your email details etc into the indicator to save you having to re-type them all the time.

Anyway, this now does what it says on the box. It will allow you to set an alert on the touch (or near touch) of any horizontal line, rectangle or trendline and sound an audible alert + email you a screenshot as a file attachment. Simply edit the object description to say "Alert_10" and it will alert you when price is 1 pip away etc.

possible future enhancemnts:
- Allow detection of FIBO levels to sound alert
- figure out how to import Windows API functions to allow sending of emails using MAPI or similar so I don't need the external .exe to do the mailing.

Question for CodeMeister:

Is the importing of the appropriate functions to do the emailing feasible? i.e. similar to how I've imported the FileWrite and ShellExecuteA functions I couldn't find anything on the web about this in MQL4. If so, any pointers about how I would go about it? I have a sneaking suspicion that it's no trivial task to do this.

Awesome work Sebastiaan76.
Have been lurking for some time and thinking hell this is way above my pay grade, but what the hell.
Maybe 1 day I will work out a little of what you are doing and so upskill a huge step.

Time for me to reread all at once 20 odd times and take notes etc

I must be able to pick up a little bit and fiddle around with things to break them. Thats how I might learn to change from altering mt4 code, to using your other tools shown here.

Glad this thread so far has basicly been between 2 sensible heads without lots of divergent ideas that may or maynot now be part of what is created.

Thanks so much.

cheers scalpz

You ask really tough questions. The answer is that I really don't know as I have never tried it. My approach was to do as much outside of MT4 as possible. I have had some bad experiences with MT4 related to interacting with Windows. Alerts got missed, lines didn't get deleted from the charts, so I suspected that the Windows interaction was weak. Keep in mind that this was over two years ago and perhaps the newer MT4 versions are better.

If I was undertaking what you suggest, my concern would be how to synchronize the emailing function with MT4. Emailing over the network is too slow to wait for, so you need to do it asynchronously. Something in the background with another thread would be ideal. MT4 will not wait for slow code to execute and will process the next tick when it arrives even if some logic (say deleting a line ) is unfinished. So I can't say it will work or won't work. Its one of those situations where one person's approach might work and another's will fail.

Understood. I'm probably not going to bother with it - as at the end of the day, it does what it needs to with the external mailing exe. It's not as elegant as it could be - but I'm pretty happy with the outcome given my self confessed status as programmer is a 'hack'

Thank you so much for sharing this great indicator Sebastiaan76.

I made slight changes to it so that it works with the latest MT4 build. And I made it so that it would create a directory for each symbol in case any alerts gets triggered at the same time. Also, I made it so that it would clean up the symbol directory every time before sending the email so that screenshots wouldn't build up. Hope this helps someone :-)

The .EXE file is the same from above.

Thanks again!

very nice,
btw, sending emails could also work with other command-line mail clients like
http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/
http://www.mutt.org/

I have tried SendEmail from http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/

It looks as it works fine. This is a way you could try it:
download the .zip and create a textfile with notepad in the sendmail directory and save it as e.g. sendemail.bat (.bat is important!)

replace the placeholders with your data, if you do not want to attach a file, delete "-a ./TESTATTACHMENT.txt".
If not deleted it will look for "TESTATTACHMENT.txt" in the directory of sendemail...

hye there
I am probably a noob but the function WindowScreenShot("\shots\\Screenshot"+Symbol()+"_"+Bid+".png",1920,1080); doesn't work at all.

I've tried even like that

if(!WindowScreenShot("shots\\tester"+Symbol()+"_"+Bid+".gif",1140,900)) // screen resolution of my PC, then
ShellExecuteA(0, "Open", "C:\OANDA - MetaTrader\MQL4\Experts\Files\MT4-AlertMailer.exe", "", "", 1);
Won't do any screenshots at all, though I'm getting alerts and emails from Alerter

What am I doing wrong ?

I have tried several email applications and can run them from the command prompt and using a batch file fine.

BUT when I try and run from Metatrader I get Error 2 Code.

sendtestemail.bat
sendEmail -f [email protected] -t [email protected] -s mysmtp.gmail.com -xu [email protected] -xp Password -u "Test email" -m "Hi buddy, this is a test email."

MQL4 Script:

#import "shell32.dll"
int ShellExecuteA(int hWnd, string Verb, string File, string Parameter, string Path, int ShowCommand);
#import

int r=ShellExecuteA(0, "Open", "C:\Users\Administrator\Tools\send.bat", "", "", 1);
///cmd /K ""
if (r <= 32){ Alert("Shell failed: ", r); return(false); }
return(true);


Like I said, running the .bat file or using command prompt, just fine. MQL4 Script does not.

Any ideas?

Hi
Sorry to bring such an old thread, However, there are interesting info in here. It has been over 5 years since Sebastiaan created this alert. Is there a a better way now to send an email with screen shot? since I tried this method and it did not work for me!

I have no coding experience, so If I want it to take a screen shot when another indicator winding (161) appears, where in the code to change the object to 161?

instead of email how about using telegram alerts using the telegram bot api

i have created some channels in the past, just for alerting purposes which are dead now but you can check the history of these channels to see how nice the alerts were...

https://t.me/TDIalerts >> TDI Alerts (Traders Dynamic Index)
https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAErWJ6WItCrds7onug >> Harmonics alerts (retrieved from ZUP indicator)

All you need is to keep a vps or a computer running the alert indicators

i am happy to pay for this, can you provide me with a price and if it's agreeable, a link to make payment, please.