IbcLoader Sample Application

The IbcLoader sample application shows how you can use IBC to start TWS/Gateway from your own Java code, so that IBC and TWS actually run within your application.

Note that running TWS/Gateway within your application in this way needs careful consideration, in particular because if the user closes TWS/Gateway, that will also terminate your application.

To run this application on Windows, use the RunIbcLoader.bat command file, supplying the TWS major version number as the first argument, for example:

RunIbcLoader.bat 947

Note that you must already have TWS/Gateway installed. A compiled jar for the program and for IBC are included, so you don't need to build it to try it out. A bash script to run the program on Linux will follow later.

IbcLoader uses the dependency injection mechanisms within IBC to replace some of the default functionality in IBC:

• the MySettings class provides its own values for the various settings used by IBC, thus removing the need for a config.ini file as used in the normal IBC setup

• the MyLoginManager class supplies the username and password

• the MyTradingModeManager class supplies the trading mode (live or paper)

• the MyMainWindowManager class augments the main window handling in IBC by setting the main window transparency to 80% and overlaying a simple clock on the main window (this is not to suggest that such things are particularly useful, just that they illustrate what can be done).

It's worth pointing out that the current version of IBC (3.7.3) doesn't have a way of injecting a logging mechanism, so all the logging that IBC does just goes to System.out. Given that most sensible applications have their own logging mechanism, it would be far preferable for the launcher application to be able to inject a logger that IBC would use so that its logging is integrated with the launching application's. This will be addressed in a (near?) future IBC release.

Finally, in case anyone notices, there is a peculiar phenomenon that this program exhibits when running in a Hyper-V virtual machine on Windows 10. When the program is running and there is no RDP connection to the virtual machine, the program's CPU usage runs very high. You can see this by leaving Task Manager running with the Performance tab visible, then closing the RDP session or switching to another program on the host, then returning to the RDP session after a few seconds: the CPU usage graphs will be high, and will return to normal almost immediately after returning to the session. Also if you show the CPU time in the Details tab, you'll see that this increases by roughly the same number of seconds as you leave the session for. This behaviour, as far as I can determine, is a bug in the handling of the Swing glass pane (which this program uses to draw the clock).