User Definable Color Inputs

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Applies to NinjaTrader 7

User definable inputs do not need to be limited to numeric values. You can have colors as an input as well. To do this you will need to make a public property for a Color object instead of an int or double.

In the "Properties" region of your code, there is only a slight change in the code snippet you would normally use to create user definable inputs. You need an extra line above the Description field.

[COLOR=Red][XmlIgnore()][/COLOR]
[Description("Color for painted region")]
[GridCategory("Parameters")]

The second difference is in the next line of code:

public [COLOR=red]Color[/COLOR] PaintColor
{
     get { return paintColor; }
     set { paintColor = value; }
}

This creates a color input for use in the dialog window when we try to add the NinjaScript to a chart.

Some additional extra code that is required for creating a color input is to serialize the color. Serialization is necessary for NinjaTrader to use the color input throughout the program. Please note that serialization is a general concept not exclusive to color inputs. There may be other struct/classes (e.g. TimeSpan) that you could use in your code that would also need to have their "value" properties serialized.

[Browsable(false)]
public string PaintColorSerialize
{
     get { return NinjaTrader.Gui.Design.SerializableColor.ToString(paintColor); }
     set { paintColor = NinjaTrader.Gui.Design.SerializableColor.FromString(value); }
}

Attached is a NinjaScript indicator sample that uses two user definable color inputs to determine the color of a drawn rectangle.

[NinjaTrader_MichaelM]

Applies to NinjaTrader 8

User definable inputs do not need to be limited to numeric values. You can have brushes as an input as well. To do this you will need to make a public property for a Brush object instead of an int or double.

In the "Properties" region of your code, there is only a slight change in the code snippet you would normally use to create user definable inputs.

[XmlIgnore()]
[Display(Name = "BorderBrush", GroupName = "NinjaScriptParameters", Order = 0)]

The second difference is in the next line of code:

public Brush BorderBrush
{ get; set; }

This creates a brush input for use in the dialog window when we try to add the NinjaScript to a chart.

Some additional extra code that is required for creating a color input is to serialize the brush. Serialization is necessary for NinjaTrader to use the brush input throughout the program. Please note that serialization is a general concept not exclusive to brush inputs. There may be other struct/classes (e.g. TimeSpan) that you could use in your code that would also need to have their "value" properties serialized.

[Browsable(false)]
public string BorderBrushSerialize
{
	get { return Serialize.BrushToString(BorderBrush); }
   	set { BorderBrush = Serialize.StringToBrush(value); }
}

Attached is a NinjaScript indicator sample that uses two user definable brush inputs to determine the color of a drawn rectangle.