IB Gateway US FUTURE market data farm remains OFF (yellow light) after reconnection

[GRULSTMRNN]

What are you yapping about? I am not working for IB nor defending them. I am goal oriented and hence look for workarounds and solutions. Bitching does not help. And yes, their API sucks in many areas. But that is all we got for the time being. I gave you a specific way how to minimize the current problems with the gateway re-connect.

From the point of view of an automated trader, most of the time, it makes no sense that the Gateway takes the initiative to shut down at a given time.
There should be no point of doing that on a daily basis if it were programmed properly. It only makes people laugh about their coding skills.

Anyway. Now, I will tell you the proper way to implement a relogin or autorestart feature.

Talking of API automation, in general, the king rule is that the gateway is a tool for the client to communicate with IB and absolutely all communications and actions must happen through that channel.

So if you add a relogin autostart feature, there has to be a command via API to trigger that, so that the client application can decide when and if to do that, in case it is necessary.

In any case, the relogin or autostart process must be seamless, require no security device to relogin to the same account and absolutely raise no prompts.
The blocking window warning about paper trading account should also be removed, or else nobody will be able to even start trying automation.

Under no circumstance, a blocking window must ever appear. Use API to tell things!

And the type of account should be communicated via API (we should not be forced to make arbitrary inference based on letters of account code). It is ridiculous that along so much unnecessary pieces of information transmitted, that one is not.

In brief.

- Absolutely no prompts at any time (repeat no prompts! Do not open warning windows! Use the API channel to tell things: there is a client listening, not humans!).

- Everything must happen via API, including possible re-login and/or auto restart commands. There must be proper API commands, to do so.

- Re-login to same account (triggered by client application) must be possible without requiring any (security) device and without any warning or prompt, outside of API communications, no matter what it is the type of account (paper/real).

 

[fullautotrading]

I do not see why you are pissed off GRULSTMRNN. I am simply providing free advice on making the Gateway perfect for automation.

The point of view of someone that has been doing this for many years, not to mention being the administrator of trading and IB specific forum, with thousands of users, and assisting investors interested in automation, could (or should) be of some value. Especially if it comes for free, and significant waste of time on my part.

My general impression is that the programmer of the Gateway does not really understand that there are only machines listening and no humans. This is not a Photoshop or Word interface, it's gateway to channel information and make information exchange possible.

There is no point opening blocking windows with buttons to be pushed or similar. Or informing about the account type with pop-ups. There is no one reading those messages with human eyes. Messaging must happen via socket.

There are no humans in front of the Gateway. If one does such a thing, it is a clear thing he has no real clue about automation. Nor can be actually using the tool at its full potential.

The communication must happen only programmatically. The Gateway must not take initiatives like auto restarting or whatever. It's the client application that, in the case, should be made able to do so and restart seamlessly the gateway, without any prompt or requiring human intervention (secure device, or pressing confirm buttons).

 

[GRULSTMRNN]

What was your proposed solution again? I must have missed it. I am not pissed off. I am just saying that complaining does not help. I agree with you about everything regarding the gateway and api that it is poorly implemented but that does not get us anywhere. Yes it's frustrating when coding against the api to a degree that it works in a stable fashion only to find out that a breaking change on their end messes things up again but the only way to solve the problem is to find a workaround ourselves. I won't hold my breath for IB to fix it.

I do not see why you are pissed off GRULSTMRNN. I am simply providing free advice on making the Gateway perfect for automation.

The point of view of someone that has been doing this for many years, not to mention being the administrator of trading and IB specific forum, with thousands of users, and assisting investors interested in automation, could (or should) be of some value. Especially if it comes for free, and significant waste of time on my part.

My general impression is that the programmer of the Gateway does not really understand that there are only machines listening and no humans. This is not a Photoshop or Word interface, it's gateway to channel information and make information exchange possible.

There is no point opening blocking windows with buttons to be pushed or similar. Or informing about the account type with pop-ups. There is no one reading those messages with human eyes. Messaging must happen via socket.

There are no humans in front of the Gateway. If one does such a thing, it is a clear thing he has no real clue about automation. Nor can be actually using the tool at its full potential.

The communication must happen only programmatically. The Gateway must not take initiatives like auto restarting or whatever. It's the client application that, in the case, should be made able to do so and restart seamlessly the gateway, without any prompt or requiring human intervention (secure device, or pressing confirm buttons).

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

Auto restart was probably a feature put in because they have a memory leak and don't know how to fix it. I've noticed that I've needed to give IB more memory (has 8G) these days.

Yes the whole login-with-person-using-code is annoying, but you can actually disable that in your IB settings. I haven't done this, but I know it's possible. Then you can use existing IB automation tools to login.

No technology is ideal, IB is the incarnation of that philosophy. Everything else will be worse in its own way. IB is like the Win32 API. WhatTheFuckEx.

Edit: I have a docker image that I built which runs gateway in it, I use a healthcheck command that checks the last tick that came in. If the last tick came in a minute ago, it forces a restart. It works well enough for me and has caught issues where IB's "auto restart" doesn't "auto restart".