Video Transcript: Add Buttons to a NinjaTrader® Chart Using the Quagensia N Edition Runtime Setup Assistant

Hi everybody, It’s Brook from Quagensia,

And in this video, I will show you how to use the Quagensia N Edition Runtime Setup Assistant, which opens automatically the first time you generate the code for a Quagensia N Edition Strategy that uses Quagensia N Edition’s “Controls Panels” feature to add buttons, text boxes, and check boxes to a NinjaTrader® chart upon which your strategy is applied or the “Tables of Data” feature to read and write tables of data to and from tabular data files from within your NinjaTrader® strategies.

For instance, if you have never completed the Quagensia N Edition Runtime Setup Assistant before and you clone this strategy template like this, save it to your “My Algos” folder, add a button to it, and attempt to generate its code by clicking this button, this assistant will appear.

Step 1 of this assistant just tells you to watch the video you are currently watching and explains what this assistant does and why it is so important.

This assistant will guide you through the quick and easy process of importing a NinjaScript® add-on file that comes with Quagensia N Edition into NinjaTrader® and requesting and obtaining a Quagensia N Edition Runtime license based on the NinjaTrader® Machine IDs of NinjaTrader® installed on your machines if you didn’t already request and obtain these licenses from Quagensia directly after you purchased your Quagensia N Edition subscription.

Once you complete this assistant you will be able to add buttons, check boxes, and text boxes to a NinjaTrader® chart upon which your strategy is applied and you will be able to read and write tables of data to and from tabular data files from within your NinjaTrader® strategies.

Let’s get started.

Click “Next” to go to step 2, which allows you to enter a non-default location for the NinjaTrader® Bin-Custom folder.

The NinjaTrader® Bin-Custom folder is the folder where NinjaTrader® expects third party dlls and certain other files to be located.

You can skip this step if you are using Quagensia N Edition and NinjaTrader® on the same machine and your NinjaTrader® Bin-Custom folder is located in its default location, which it probably is.

If your NinjaTrader® Bin-Custom folder is on a different machine, or in the rare event that you changed the folder path of the NinjaTrader® Bin-Custom folder from its default location, you will need to enter the folder path to the NinjaTrader® Bin-Custom folder in the text box below.

Click “Next” to go to step 3, which guides you through the process of importing the QuagensiaNEditionRuntime.zip NinjaScript® add-on into NinjaTrader®.

Once you’ve done this, the red message near the bottom of this screen will turn green and let you know that this NinjaScript® add-on’s files were successfully imported into NinjaTrader®.

To import this NinjaScript® add-on into NinjaTrader®,

First wait until a time when you are not actively trading in a live account from within NinjaTrader® and are not running any back-tests or optimizations in the NinjaTrader® Strategy Analyzer.

Second, make sure that your NinjaScript® files currently compile without errors since it is not possible to import a NinjaScript® add-on into a NinjaTrader® installation whose NinjaScript® files are not in a compilable state.

To make sure that your NinjaScript® files are currently in a compilable state, first open the NinjaScript® Editor by clicking on the “NinjaScript Editor” menu item in the “New” main menu in NinjaTrader®.

Then, press the “Compile” toolbar button in the NinjaScript® Editor’s main toolbar at the top of the NinjaScript® Editor window. This button’s icon should have a tiny arrow pointing down on it.

If no compilation errors appear at the bottom of the NinjaScript® Editor window, then your NinjaScript® files compiled successfully and you can continue to the next set of instructions in this step of the Quagensia N Edition Runtime Setup Assistant.

If compilation errors do appear at the bottom of the NinjaScript® Editor window, then you will need to fix these errors first. The names of the NinjaScript® files that cause compilation errors should be shown as part of the information about the compilation errors. If you don’t need the NinjaScript® files with the compilation errors, you can always either permanently delete them by right clicking on them in the “NinjaScript Explorer” pane on the right side of the NinjaScript® Editor window and selecting “Remove”, or if you don’t want to delete the NinjaScript® files with the compilation errors, you can always navigate to NinjaTrader®’s Bin-Custom folder’s “Strategies” subfolder using File Explorer and move the files to a subfolder that is completely outside of NinjaTrader®’s folder structure, for instance by moving them to a folder on your desktop.

Once your NinjaScript® files are in a compilable state, the next step is to copy the folder path of the folder that contains the NinjaScript® add-on file “QuagensiaNEditionRuntime.zip” onto the clipboard by pressing this button.

Finally, open NinjaTrader®, and in NinjaTrader®’s main menu select the “Tools > Import > NinjaScript Add-On…” main menu item and paste the file path from the clipboard into the file chooser by selecting the folder path currently in the file chooser, right clicking on it, and selecting “Paste” from the context menu that appears. Then, press the “Enter” key or click this button to navigate to that folder path, and select the file named QuagensiaNEditionRuntime.zip and press the “Open” button.

The import process should be able to successfully import the QuagensiaNEditionRuntime.zip NinjaScript® add-on file. If the process was successful, a dialog box will appear that informs you of this. If this dialog box mentions that you need to close and reopen NinjaTrader® to complete the process, then close and reopen NinjaTrader®; otherwise you do not need to close and reopen NinjaTrader® to finish the import process. If a dialog box appears indicating that the import process was unsuccessful, please do not hesitate to request help in the official Quagensia Discord community.

Once this NinjaScript® add-on file is successfully imported into NinjaTrader®, there should be two green messages here that start with “Good” and no red messages that start with “Problems Detected”, and the “Next >>” button in the lower right corner of this window should be enabled and clickable so that you can then press it to go on to the next step.

Click “Next” to go to step 4, which guides you through the process of requesting and acquiring paid licenses to use the Quagensia N Edition Runtime from within NinjaTrader® for your up to two NinjaTrader Machine IDs so that you can use the Quagensia N Edition Control Panels features like adding buttons, check boxes, and text boxes to NinjaTrader® charts on those two machines.

If you have already acquired your Quagensia N Edition Runtime licenses from Quagensia directly after you purchased your Quagensia N Edition subscription, then you can skip this step by clicking the “Next” button.

If you haven’t yet acquired your up to two Quagensia N Edition Runtime licenses, the first step is to pay for a Quagensia N Edition subscription if you don’t yet have one. You can do this from the Quagensia N Edition pricing page on the official Quagensia website, which opens in your default browser when you click this link.

Next, email your one or two NinjaTrader® Machine IDs to support [at] quagensia.com from the same email account you used to purchase Quagensia N Edition from our online store, then wait for email confirmation that your machines’ NinjaTrader® Machine IDs are now licensed to use the Quagensia N Edition Runtime.

You can find your NinjaTrader® Machine IDs from within NinjaTrader®’s “Help” main menu on each machine by selecting the “Help” main menu’s “About…” menu item. When you select this menu item, the “About NinjaTrader” window will open. Instead of typing out a NinjaTrader® Machine ID by hand in your email, you can copy it to the clipboard from the “About NinjaTrader” window and paste it into your email by selecting the NinjaTrader® Machine ID in the “About NinjaTrader” window the way you normally select text, then copying it to the clipboard by either pressing the Control and C keys at the same time or by right clicking on the selected text and selecting the “Copy” menu item from the context menu that appears, then pasting it into your email by placing your cursor at a location in the body of your email and either pressing the Control and V keys at the same time or right clicking on the location and selecting the “Paste” menu item from the context menu that appears.

You can copy the support [at] quagensia [dot] com email address to the clipboard by pressing this button, then paste it into the “To:” field of your email.

You can expect to hear back from us within one U.S. trading day at the longest, but most likely you will hear back from us within a few hours if we receive your email during normal business hours (in the Chicago time zone).

We highly recommend that you request two Quagensia N Edition Runtime licenses for two separate NinjaTrader® Machine IDs, and that you have both of the machines (or virtual machines) up to date and ready for trading, on different internet connections, and not hosted with the same virtual private server (VPS) provider in the event that your main trading machine or its internet connection has any issues, including the scenario of the NinjaTrader® Machine ID of your main virtual machine changing due to your virtual private server provider updating your virtual machine or other scenarios that will cause the NinjaTrader® vendor licensing system to see your virtual machine as a new machine that is not yet licensed to use the Quagensia N Edition Runtime.

Once you’ve heard back from us that your NinjaTrader® Machine IDs are licensed to use the Quagensia N Edition Runtime, close and reopen NinjaTrader® on those machines. This should cause your Quagensia N Edition Runtime license statuses to refresh inside of NinjaTrader® on those machines so that you can use the Quagensia N Edition control panels features from inside of NinjaTrader® on those machines.

If you use NinjaTrader® on virtual machines such as the virtual machines that are used by virtual private server (VPS) providers that some NinjaTrader® users use to run NinjaTrader® in the cloud, please read the important information about NinjaTrader® Machine IDs and virtual machines here. If you only use NinjaTrader® on physical machines, such as laptops and workstations, you can skip reading this section.

Click next to go to the fifth and final step of the assistant, which tells you that you have successfully completed the Quagensia N Edition Runtime Setup Assistant and has some useful information that you can read through.

Click “Close” to close the assistant and you’re done.

That’s it. We’ve successfully completed the assistant. Note that this assistant will automatically appear in the future if you install a newer version of Quagensia N Edition that comes with a newer version of the QuagensiaNEditionRuntime.zip NinjaScript® add-on.

Now that we have imported the QuagensiaNEditionRuntime.zip NinjaScript® add-on, when we click this button to generate the code for a Quagensia N Edition Strategy that uses the Control Panels features like buttons, such as the strategy we created at the beginning of this video, the Quagensia N Edition Runtime Setup Assistant no longer automatically opens because Quagensia N Edition has determined that the files that were imported into NinjaTrader® when we imported the QuagensiaNEditionRuntime.zip NinjaScript® add-on are present and are the correct ones.

Since the NinjaScript® Editor is currently open, it is ready to receive and automatically compile the strategy with the button we created at the beginning of this video, so let’s press this button and listen for the sound of success that indicates that the strategy compiled successfully.

And there it is.

Since the machine on which this video is being recorded has a Quagensia N Edition Runtime license for its NinjaTrader® Machine ID let’s apply this strategy to a chart in NinjaTrader® to see the button that we added to the copy of this strategy template at the beginning of the video.

And there it is! To move this button to a different location on the chart, to change the way it looks, and to add no-code trading logic that will be executed when this button is clicked, we can go back into Quagensia N Edition and scroll down to the bottom of our strategy.

Let’s move this button from the top left corner of the chart to the bottom left corner of the chart here.

Let’s also change its background color to green, and its text color to white.

Now let’s add some no-code trading logic that will be executed when this button is clicked.

Let’s make it enter a long position, and let’s draw a dot on the high of the current bar.

Easy. Let’s send the strategy back to NinjaTrader again, and refresh the strategy on the chart to see our changes.

The button moved to the lower left corner of the chart, and it is now green with white text. Let’s click it and see if it enters a long position and draws a dot… there it is! It entered a position and there is the dot.

Now that you know how to use the Quagensia N Edition Runtime Setup Assistant to guide you through the quick and easy process of importing the NinjaScript® add-on file that comes with Quagensia N Edition into NinjaTrader® and acquiring Quagensia N Edition Runtime licenses based on the NinjaTrader® Machine IDs of NinjaTrader® installed on your machines, you now have the knowledge to set yourself up to be able to add buttons, check boxes, text boxes, and labels to the NinjaTrader® charts to which your Quagensia N Edition Strategies are applied and add no-code trading logic that will be executed when the buttons are clicked to create both simple control panels as well as complex rich trading applications that best match your discretionary or semi-automated trading style.

That’s the end of our video. Thanks for watching.

If you liked it, please let us know by giving this video a like and subscribing to our channel. And if you know of anyone that would appreciate this video, please share it with them.

You can download the Quagensia N Edition free trial from the official download page on the Quagensia website, which is linked to in this video’s description.

And we hope to see you in our Discord community where you can get help and collaborate on building no-code strategies with other traders like you.