I'm curious what guided the man who designed this API in such a weird, ridiculous and just a bad way.
Why do you deliver it as some strange .exe file?
Don't you realize that Windows is not even the default system for a Software Developer?
When the API for Linux will be released?

Marcin,

IQFeed has always been developed as a Windows program. The app IQConnect.exe is what makes the connection to the API servers. The only thing you have to do is launch it with some parameters to make the connection with the IQFeed servers.

IQFeed does have a number of Linux users, and there is a long-term plan to implement IQFeed for it, though there is currently no ETA. So, in the meantime, you’ll have to use Wine or a comparable solution to run IQConnect.exe in Linux. I can help with this.

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Sincerely,
Gary Stephen
DTN IQFeed Implementation Support Specialist

Hahaha. So true



Preach!

Are there documentation anywhere for me to write my own client? If you provide me the details, I will write a cross platform client, and share it for free/open-source to everyone.

Hyperbaboon,

what do you mean by cross platform client?

Thanks,
Mathieu

Agreed. Not having a proper linux SDK is unbelievable.

We appreciate your interest in a Linux based API. It is on our Roadmap. Unfortunately I cannot provide an ETA.

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Stephen Shockey
Senior Customer Support Representative and Product Support Specialist

DTN
800-779-7299
stephen.shockey@dtn.com

The other recommendation was to use wine which is super flaky. Has anyone been successful with it on a consistent basis on Linux ? I am running on Ubuntu and it fails to launch randomly. Here's how I do it. I have wine with all the dependencies installed.
#1) /opt/wine-stable/bin/wine "/home/ubuntu/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/DTN/IQFeed/IQLinkLauncher.exe"
This launches which needs a start button clicked manually.
#2) After this, the IQConnect Login window appears [I have save password enabled and Automatically connect enabled]. If I am lucky, this goes through. Many times, I am stuck at #1) where #2) does not even appear.

I have to keep killing #1) and relaunch until #2) is successful. It is random enough that I can't figure out what is happening. Race condition ? Threading Error ?

This is frustrating because without automating data collection via the API on Ubuntu, I don't know how one could use it [Running it on Windows would be rebuilding the entire stack on windows..too cumbersome]. Most vendors these days offer a simple RESTful interface.

I find that if I start news or the quote tool, the app initiates the login sequence, and serves to keep the service pinned up.

Typically the first time doesn't work. On the second try it works. Then I can connect my tools. The session seems to be reliable for me at that point.

DTN has been promising an API for many years.

At the very least, it would be nice if they could simulate a WINE session themselves, and maybe see what this issue is and at least resolve it, so that at minimum, WINE does work reliably.

And as a note, this is using x64 version of Wine with the x86 32 bit extensions.

I've been using IQFeed under Wine on Fedora successfully for a very long time. My usage pattern is simple, though -- a "monitor" app starts up before the opening session and stays open until the close, while apps performing specialized functions connect as needed during the day. The monitor app is the only one that tracks and manages the status of the service.

I'd certainly like a native API, and in the past have offered to help out with an implementation, but I understand the need to keep the support load under control.

@stargazer - Thanks for the tips.

@taa - In your setup, is IQfeed launched manually ? I could certainly use more tips from you if you've been successful. I really want to have IQFeed running forever in the background and my client connect whenever needed with minimal intervention. Can multiple clients connect to IQfeed or just one ?

@karthikkrishan: I start my monitoring app when my machine boots. That can be done manually, by a command in rc.local, or by a systemd service. (I haven't done the last, though the configuration process looks pretty reasonable.) The monitor runs until the system shuts down, though it can be killed and restarted manually.

The monitor can be commanded to remain active 24/7, which is useful during development, but normally it sleeps while the market is closed and wakes up shortly before the open. It starts up IQConnect by forking and execing

/usr/bin/wine /home/home-dir/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/DTN/IQFeed/iqconnect.exe -product product-name -version version-number -login iqfeed-username -password iqfeed-password -autoconnect 

Then it opens the streaming port and communicates with the usual protocol.

The monitor has an exponential-fallback procedure to attempt reconnection in case the connection is lost, but I'll skip that for now. It's not clear to me that it's needed to the extent that it used to be.

At the end of the day the monitor automatically forks and execs other apps to collect the day's history and fundamentals. Multiple connections work fine; for example, I usually do history fetch with seven clients running in parallel.

During the day I start my other apps manually for analysis and trading. They just assume IQConnect is running, connect to the appropriate port(s), and go. Obviously you could do something more sophisticated, but I haven't found it necessary, and having a single "master" process to handle error conditions simplified things when I was writing the code years ago.

At the end of the trading day the monitor closes the last connection and after a while iqconnect.exe exits. Just to make sure everything stays sane for the next day, the monitor shoots it down with

killall iqconnect.exe

if it's hanging around unexpectedly.

So that's an overview of how it all works. IQFeed is a stronger, more reliable product than it was when I started this long ago, so you can probably get by with a simpler infrastructure nowadays.