Export-data-to-ASCII-from-C-code

Hi everyone,

I recently purchased WL8 and ran into problems before even starting to translate my WL6 strategies into WL8.

To begin familiarising myself with WL8, I started with the simplest piece of code I had in WL6 — a program with a single loop that goes through historical data and writes it into an ASCII file, then adds some more data that I need for my strategy. After the file is created, I use it as input for my real strategy.

Translating the code wasn’t an issue — that part was straightforward. The problem is execution. In WL6, I could just click the “Run the Strategy” button in the editor, and the code would execute on the chosen symbol. Alternatively, I could open the strategy, click on a symbol on the left, and the code would run immediately, creating the ASCII file as intended. It didn’t matter that this code wasn’t a real trading strategy.

Not so in WL8. In the code editor window, there’s no simple “Run” button for a one-time execution. The only option is “Run Backtest,” which triggers multiple executions, and that breaks my system because the code tries to create, write, and delete the ASCII file repeatedly.

I noticed there’s an “Execute” button in the chart window, but when I click it, nothing happens — the code doesn’t seem to run. Likewise, clicking a symbol in the DataSet doesn’t execute the code just once as it did in WL6. Instead, it launches a full backtest loop and runs the code multiple times.

Am I missing something? I just want to execute the code once, like in WL6 — not backtest it, it is not a strategy

Thanks,
Branko

CODE:

using WealthLab.Backtest;
using WealthLab.Core;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using WealthLab.Indicators;
using ScottPlot.Palettes;


namespace WealthScript2 
{
   public class USERXtoASCII : UserStrategyBase
   {

      //create indicators and other objects here, this is executed prior to the main trading loop
      public override void Initialize(BarHistory bars)
      {
      }
      
      //protected void Execute()
      public override void Execute(BarHistory bars, int idx)
      {          
         const string sep = ",";
         const string fmt = "0.00########";
         string dtefmt = "yyyyMMdd";

         string path = @"C:\Data\ASCII8\";
         if (!Directory.Exists(path))
            throw new Exception("You must create the directory " + path);

         WriteToDebugLog("Exporting: " + bars.Symbol);
         string file = path + bars.Symbol + ".csv";

         List<string> datalist = new List<string>();
         double nopen, nhigh, nlow, nclose;
         string csv;
         DateTime firstDate, secondDate;
         string secondDateString = "2024-09-06";
         DateTime.TryParse(secondDateString, out secondDate);

         for (int bar = 0; bar < bars.Count; bar++)
         {
            csv = bars.DateTimes[bar].ToString(dtefmt) + sep
               + bars.Open[bar].ToString(fmt) + sep
               + bars.High[bar].ToString(fmt) + sep
               + bars.Low[bar].ToString(fmt) + sep
               + bars.Close[bar].ToString(fmt) + sep
               + bars.Volume[bar].ToString("0");

         
            datalist.Add(csv);
         }

         // Add synthetic data
         DateTime dNewDate = bars.DateTimes[bars.Count - 1];
         int iCounter = 0;
         while (iCounter < 77)
         {
            dNewDate = dNewDate.AddDays(1);
            int iDayOfWeek = (int)dNewDate.DayOfWeek;
            if (iDayOfWeek != 0 && iDayOfWeek != 6)
            {
               csv = dNewDate.ToString(dtefmt) + sep
                  + bars.Close[bars.Count - 1].ToString(fmt) + sep
                    + bars.Close[bars.Count - 1].ToString(fmt) + sep
                  + bars.Close[bars.Count - 1].ToString(fmt) + sep
                  + bars.Close[bars.Count - 1].ToString(fmt) + sep
                  + bars.Volume[bars.Count - 1].ToString("0");

               datalist.Add(csv);
               iCounter++;
            }
         }

         File.WriteAllLines(file, datalist);
         WriteToDebugLog("Complete!");
      }
   }

}

.