reading from excel or file

[Garym]

I'd like to back up the request to be able to read from a text file or preferably an Excel cell

Specifically:

For a given date and time if cell A1 ="True" then draw a vertical line, Thickness, Color, Style etc at that point in time

For a given date and time if cell B1 ="True" or => cell C1 or <= D1 etc then draw a horizontal line, Thickness, Color, Style, periods forward, periods backwards etc from that point in time

For a given date and time if cell C1 ="True" then draw a my1.gif
at that point in Time and Price.Offset(xaxis, yaxis)

or a given date and time if cell B1 ="True" then draw background color BLUE, Else draw Background Color red

For a given date and time if cell B1 ="True" or => cell C1 or <= D1 etc then GOFLAT, GOLONG, GOSHORT

I realise this isn't trivial but I think its a very important feature
Any ideas?

Gary

[eSignal_JasonK]

Hello Gary,

It is not currently possible to read Excel data into EFS. That's an interesting idea however. I don't know if this would be possible, but you can always submit your new feature suggestion to [email protected].

[spike500]

Gary,

is it not possible to program a field where you put the conditions you specified in Excel?
I don't program in Esignal but in Easylanguage (basics) so i don't know what is possible and what isn't. But theoretically you can program anything you wish.
I have programmed conditions in Tradestation where the thikness and color of the histogrammes change depending on certain conditions. It visualizes much better the situation. Even complex conditions ( nested loopings) can be programmed without any problem.

[gspiker]

Spike500,

The problem is that he wants to read from an excel file...which requires that something understand the excel file format, or that you can communicate with excel itself as it is running. eSignal doesn't provide the first, and while I thought they had the second I will bow to Jason's superior knowledge on this subject mater.

What I do:

Save the excel file as a CSV (You can do this in excel itself...there is an option to save as a CSV) to a place in the <eSignal_Home>/FormulaOutput dir.

Use the file I/O features of EFS to read and parse the data file.

This isn't hard for a programmer, but may not be trivial for a newbie.

Garth

[tradergeha]

I guess Gary responded to my thread, so I would like to repeat my original idea.
getting the data from an excel file would of course be pretty cool,
but I would be satisfied if I had an efs where I can enter the values, color and thickness for, say, 10 lines, and esignal draws them into the chart.
there's an efs called "LinesLabels", which goes in this direction, but it lets you choose color and thickness only for all lines at once.
I think for anyone with a basic knowledge of the efs language which DOESNT include me :-) ) it should be easy to add the color/thickness code for the other lines as well.

[digilume]

Yes , it does not need to be an Excel file.
Does anyone have a code example of reading a time and date and a code like msg 42 from a txt file and that draws a an ASCII character above the bar for that time?
Thanks G