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In order to select certain range of dates in the historical chart, then scroll through the history of tickers, we can mark the range of dates we interested in using Range Markers (double-click on the chart or mark the bars and hit F12, SHIFT+F12).

Then, use View->Zoom->Range menu to zoom the chart to our range selection.

We can also assign a keyboard shortcut to View->Zoom->Range command or create a custom toolbar button to have it easily accessible (e.g. CTRL+SHIFT+R). This can be done in Tools->Customize (http://www.amibroker.com/guide/h_customizeui.html)

After we switch the symbol, in situations when the chart shifts e.g. due to different history length in those symbols – all we have to do is to hit CTRL+SHIFT+R to bring back the view to the range we wanted.

Browsing through the list of symbols can be automated further with scripts. Below is a sample auto-play script that will automatically browse through the list of symbols and will set the zoom to the dates we set in the code. All we need is just to start the script and watch it all switching automatically, without any manual actions required.

Here is a sample script that will browse through the list of symbols and set the zoom to show year 2010:

To use above code follow these steps:

1. Open Notepad
2. Copy-paste above the code
3. Save the file with .JS extension (which means that system will treat this as JScript code)
4. Make sure that AmiBroker is running with desired chart as active one
5. Double click on .JS file to execute the JScript code

IMPORTANT: if you are running 64-bit Windows and have BOTH 32-bit and 64-bit versions of AmiBroker installed the OLE scripts by default would only talk to 64-bit instance. To use 32-bit version instead you would need to follow advice given in this article: http://www.amibroker.com/kb/2015/01/12/ole-automation-scripts-with-32-and-64-bit/

It is worth noting that going through series of charts is not the only way to compare performance of various symbols over time. There are other dedicated built tools for comparing several securities (without switching symbols, but within one chart window), including Price (Foreign) and Relative Performance indicator. These functionalities are shown in the following video:
http://www.amibroker.com/video/TwoSymbolsOneChart.html

Filed by Tomasz Janeczko at 7:04 am under Charting
Comments Off on How to browse charts in selected date range

Charts can be exported as GIF or PNG files either manually or programmatically.

To export chart image manually, simply use Edit->Image->Export to file menu. Instead of exporting you can also copy the image to Windows clipboard (Edit->Image->Copy As Bitmap – this will copy bitmap image or Edit->Image->Copy As Metafile – this will copy vector/scalable graphic).

In order to export image in programmatic manner (from external program), you can use OLE automation interface described here http://www.amibroker.com/guide/objects.html

Below is a sample JScript code that shows how to use OLE interface from the script:

The code is intended to be used from the outside of AmiBroker.

To use above code follow these steps:

1. Open Notepad
2. Copy-paste above the code
3. Save the file with .JS extension (which means that system will treat this as JScript code)
4. Make sure that AmiBroker is running with desired chart as active one
5. Double click on .JS file to execute the JScript code

After doing so, resulting example.gif image file can be found on C: drive.

OLE automation can also be used from any other COM/OLE-aware programs/languages.

Filed by Tomasz Janeczko at 7:43 pm under Charting
Comments Off on How to export chart image to a file

In order to automatically change a property for many symbols – instead of manual action in Symbol -> Information dialog one can use OLE automation.
For example – to unmark “Use only local database” option for all the symbols, it’s enough to run such SCAN:

– Analysis -> Formula Editor:
– enter:

– Tools -> Send to Auto-analysis
– Apply to: All Symbols, N-last quotations = 1
– press SCAN

The other example shows how to rename all the symbols and replace .TO suffix with -TC (this may be useful when we want to use the existing historical data with a new datasource which uses a different symbology).

– Analysis -> Commentary
– enter:
AB = CreateObject("Broker.Application");
sts = AB.Stocks();
Qty = sts.Count;
for( i = Qty - 1; i >= 0; i = i - 1 )
{
 st = sts.Item( i );
 Ticker = st.Ticker;
 printf("changing " + ticker + "\n" );
 Length = StrLen(Ticker );
 if( StrFind(ticker, ".TO") )
      st.Ticker = StrLeft( ticker, Length-3)+"-TC";


– press APPLY
– use: VIEW -> Refresh All to see the changes in the symbol tree.

CAVEAT: The commentary formula above iterates through ALL SYMBOLS in the database, therefore, if your database is big (has more than 100 symbols) it may be SLOW, and you may experience “not responding” message, but it is NORMAL. It does not mean that program has stopped working. It just means that it has not completed iteration yet. In that case just WAIT and don’t touch it.

Filed by AmiBroker Support at 10:03 am under Data
3 Comments