Getting Started

This guide assumes you have the following prerequisites:
  • this documentation
  • the Traderion Python package: traderion2-[x].0.zip (traderion2-1.0.zip, traderion2-2.0.zip or traderion2-3.0.zip) found on the Download links from the Main page.
  • Python 3.5 or higher installed for version 1.0 and 2.0 and Python 3.8 for version 3.0
  • a Traderion user account

Installation

We will use the traderion2-3.0.zip version as an example. If you plan on using the other versions, simply replace the name of the zip file on all steps.

! The command to run Python may vary depending on your system configuration. Common aliases include python, python3, python3.x (e.g., python3.8).

Linux & MacOS

  1. Extract the zip file into a directory:
    unzip traderion2-3.0.zip -d traderion2-3.0
  2. Go to the root directory and create a virtual environment:
    cd traderion2-3.0 && cd sim.quant.api && python3 -m venv venv
  3. Activate the virtual enviornment:
    source venv/bin/activate
  4. Install the packages:
    python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
  5. You can now remove the compressed file:
    rm -r ../../traderion2-3.0.zip

Windows

  1. Extract the zip file into a directory:
    Expand-Archive traderion2-3.0.zip -d traderion2-3.0
  2. Go to the root directory:
    cd traderion2-3.0; cd sim.quant.api

Step 3 involves activating a virtual environment. Below are three different methods to accomplish this.

  1. Using venv for virtual environment
3a. Create a virtual environment:
python3 -m venv .myenv
4a. Activate the environment:
.myenv\Scripts\activate
  1. Using conda instead of venv

If you want to use conda instead of venv, replace steps 3a and 4a with steps 3b and 4b:

3b. Use this to create a virtual environment with conda:
conda create --name traderion python=3.8
4b. Activate the conda environment:
conda activate traderion
  1. Using pipenv instead of venv

If you want to use pipenv instead of venv, replace steps 3a and 4a with steps 3c and 4c:

3c. Create and activate a virtualenvironment with venv:
pipenv shell
4c. Install the requiremenets:
pipenv install -r requirements.txt
  1. Install the dependencies:

    python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

  2. Copy a bot example into the parent directory, edit the file with the desired details (room_id, username, password), and run it:

    copy examples/composite_bot.py main.py

    python3 main.py

!! In order to activate virtual environments, you might also need to run the following in admin mode:
Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Running your first bot

  1. Copy our example bot to your project directory:
    cp /path/to/examples/random_bot.py main.py

If the trading-bot package files are in /Users/john/Desktop/Trading_bots/traderion2-3.0, the command becomes the following: (Replace "john" with your machine user)

cd /Users/john/Desktop/Trading_bots/traderion2-3.0
  1. Create a trading session on the Traderion platform and join it. After you join the session, the url should look like this:

    https://sim.traderion.com/trading/<room_id>/dealing

    <room_id> in the above url is a number that uniquely identifies your session. We call it a room id.

  2. Open main.py and fill in your username, password and room_id in the main function.

  3. Run the example with python main.py

The bot will run until the room is finished. To stop the bot earlier, just press CTRL + C.

When using a multi-asset bot like composite_bot, you may need to define strategy profiles for each asset. The corresponding Swift IDs, which must be used in the str_map object within the composite_bot.py module, can be found by running the bot with the --info parameter:

python3.8 main.py --info

Congratulations! You can now start adding your own custom logic to the bot.