Welcome to the IG Labs Community

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Chris
Welcome to the IG Labs Community

This is a place where developers can seek help, share knowledge, and contribute ideas around using our APIs. Our hope for the Community is to create the best possible resource for developers.

We encourage you to seek help, share your knowledge as a developer, and contribute ideas.

We’ve composed a list of questions you may be wondering about the Community:

Who’s part of it?

IG Labs will initially be open to IG clients and developers from the UK, but we plan to expand to other countries.

What should I do if I have questions or requests related to my IG account but not to IG Labs?

If you have any questions or requests not related to IG Labs then please contact us directly.

I want to create a post not related to using the APIs.

If you have a question or suggestion that’s not related specifically to using the our APIs, please contact us directly.

I want to reply to another member.

We encourage you to post replies to other members. But before you post we ask you to read the Community Guidelines so that we promote a friendly and communicative environment.

I want to make a suggestion or provide feedback about this community.

If you have any specific questions or feedback about the IG Labs Community, post a reply in this thread.

Who moderates the Community?

It's moderated by me - Chris. You'll see my introduction post below.

Chris
About me

Hi, I'm Chris and I'm the IG Labs Community moderator.
I'll be on hand to ensure things run smoothly, stay on topic, and - most importantly - that you get an answer to any questions you have.
From time to time I may create posts containing problems that IG's own developers have encountered, along with their solutions.
I look forward to working with you all to make the IG Labs Community a valuable resource.

Shivayan
Seeking help on order conversion to IG.

Hi Chris,

I am a new member in this community although have been a IG customer in Australia for over 5 years now. In discussion with few people in IG Australia, I have been given to understand that the API will accept equity CFD order but will not distribute prices via the same API because of some issues. Well, that's a good start as I trade equity CFD only.

I use a 3rd party trading software which is able to generate orders for few other brokers but not for IG. I am seeking help to develop a bridge that could convert the output from my software into an order that could be placed on IG platform using the API that you offer. I have zero programming skill and hence seeking assistance in this development.

Many thanks,
Sid

Chris
Seeking help on order conversion to IG.

Hi Sid

Welcome to the Labs Community!

We don't provide bespoke development as part of our API offering unfortunately. We do plan to introduce software development kits that will make using our API much easier for developers, but this may or may not aid with integration with existing trading platforms. As our community grows, it might be worth sharing your idea for the bridge with the other members, as there might be more demand for this development.

Which trading software are you currently using?

Chris

delboysoho
Advice for beginners.

Hi everyone,

Hope everything is going well. I work in the city of London and we have been using IG for a number of years now. I was very excited to see this new facility, because ultimately I want to be able to automate my trading strategies on IG. I have algorithm that I implemented in Java for back-testing my strategies and I now want to go ahead an automate them.
I have coding experience in Java and C++, and am interested in finding out what is the best way to go about using this API. My understanding is that it is some sort of link that allows you to stream live data from IG into your own software, and a link that allows you to output commands such as 'buy' or 'sell' to your IG account, correct me if I'm wrong please. My main questions at the moment are (i) Which are the best programming languages to use when building software to work with IG? (I am particularly interested in using Q as it is apparently very good with time series and number crunching). (ii) How does one go about using the API to say stream the data into an excel spreadsheet? (iii) Has anyone else successfully automated their trading strategies?
If anyone could suggest useful resources/ things to learn that would be fantastic, I have just completed a degree in physics but am going on to study computer science this september and am very keen to learn as much as possible.

Kind regards,

Derek

djas
Advice for beginners.

Hi,

I've just joined the community and am also very keen to automate a spreadbetting strategy using IG Labs API.

Although I am an engineer and can generally understand the gist and flow of scripts, I am not a programmer. I am therefore feeling my way into the automation task and would welcome any advice or benefit of others' experiences in getting a system operational.

So far I have a spreadsheet set up with the calculations of the algorithm and have separately got the sample API connected to a demo account.

My next task is to understand how to link the price feed to the strategy and then set up some testing to prove all is functioning correctly.

If anyone can point me in the right direction or share their experiences in achieving this step I would be most appreciative.

Kind Regards

David

bodge21
Hello All

Hi All,

I've just joined the community and am looking forward to playing with the API to automate trades hooked up to some Machine Learning systems. I'm an experienced programmer writing bots & machine learning scripts but new to forex trading.

So far I have written some auto-scripts to gather and process data from Yahoo finance and then normalise and calculate some extra fields (candlestick info, bollinger values, stochastic values etc) to create datasets which are then used with various AI classifiers (Decision Tree, Guassian, Adaboost etc) to make real-time predictions across the forex majors.

I've got a great success rate with simple result rules (i.e positive pips in 60 mins) and am now extending it to more usable rules (positive x pips before negative y pips ) to beat the spread.

To test the theories more robustly I'll be setting the bot to auto-trade with the IG API's and then improve the datasets and algorithms.

Looking forward to taking an active part in the community, learning and sharing incites!

James

Mattread
introduction

Hi this is Matt Read and I am new to this forum. I trade mainly equity Binaries. I would like to learn to use the API to feed live prices into an excel spreadsheet. I have vba knowledge but absolutely no knowledge of API's/HTTP etc!.

First question. What do I need to download to start?
2nd question. Are there any example spreadsheets that feed in live prices? (ie., you enter instrument code in a cell, and the live price (bid/ask etc) appears in the cell next to it...something simple (Don't want to send orders yet!)

thanks in advance

Matt

Chris
introduction

Hi Matt,

Have you tried download our Sample Excel app from: http://labs.ig.com/sample-apps

This would be a good place for you to get started. Do let us know if you have any questions.

Chris

Mattread
Hi Chris,

Hi Chris,

downloaded spreadsheet. tried to login but getting 'compile error:cannot find project or library', and it is breaking on the "Public Function RStoJSON(rs As ADODB.Recordset) As String"

am I missing any references for the vba?

matt

Mattread
oh, and it's also massively

oh, and it's also massively unstable and crashes soon afterwards!!

Chris
introduction

Hi Mattread,

Have you taken a look at our Excel Sample App troubleshooting post?

https://labs.ig.com/node/140

Chris

salvo
Trouble running sample apps

Hi,

I'm colin, I have an IG account and demo account and I am tying to run the sample app
through the "Try It " button.
I enter my ig account/password/api key but when I click "Login" nothing happens,
literally; it doesn't even seem to send the data although the button shows it has clicked.
I am on an imac so I don't know if this makes a difference.

Heeeeeeeeeep

thanks

Chris
Trouble running sample apps

Hi salvo,

Can you please try logging into the API companion with the same details, and let me know how you get on. If you are still unable to connect, can you please send us a full screenshot of the API companion app, including the error you receive back via the Contact Us section.

Thanks,
Chris

ayidagav
Hello!

Hi Chris / All,

Just introducing myself to the forums... I've browsed around and read quite a few of the threads already so hopefully I won't be repeating myself when I ask questions...

1) Is there any way to obtain historical market data without subscribing to the API and persisting it locally myself?
2) Is there an API documentation/spec in the form of a RAML or Swagger file? This would certainly help when having to move forward when changes to the API are made.
3) How are changes to the API disclosed?

Thanks in advance for your time!

ayidagav

Chris
Welcome ayidagav,

Welcome ayidagav,

To answer the questions that you had raised before.

1) By using the REST API, you'd be able to obtain historical market data. http://labs.ig.com/rest-trading-api-reference/service-detail?id=473 but there is a weekly default limit of 10k datapoints per week.
2) I'm afraid that's currently not available.
3) Any changes are disclosed at the following section: http://labs.ig.com/gettingstarted

To query a list of recent API changes please use the release hashtag: @IGLabs #webapi #release

ayidagav
Thanks Chris, I'm following

Thanks Chris, I'm following @IGLabs on my twitter now.

Are there any plans to make a RAML/Swagger spec available in the future? Looking at the Java sample code on github, the classes underneath the com.iggroup.webapi.samples.client.rest.dto package look like they have been code generated from a schema, is it possible to make this schema available?

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I was aware of the historical price data service but was wondering if a single static dump of the full data can be made available without having to pull the data or being restricted by the data point limit?

Thanks!

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