IbHandler

An easy-to-use Python handler to the Interactive Brokers trading system for Python 2.x.

released 10 Jan 2016

About

IbHandler implements the IbPy wrapper of the Interactive Brokers API 1 with recent improvements of Bryce Lampe 2. It provides a simple way of of communicating to Trader Workstation or the IB Gateway through Python.

Installation

IbHandler requires Python 2.6 or newer. The easiest way of installing is by cloning (or downloading) this repository by

git clone https://github.com/muennix/IbHandler.git

and installing the Python module by running

Python setup.py install

The above command should atomically download and install the IbPy module from github in case you have not already installed it.

How to use IbHandler?

Basics

It's simple. Here are some examples. First, let's create an instance:

import IbHandler
mxh = IbHandler.mxIBhandler(account="UXXXXXXX")

The connection instance is stored in mxh.con if you would like to access it directly.

Let's check the liquid funds available in a given currency, e.g. USD (Note: This function is synchronous):

mxh.get_available_cash(currency = "USD")

Now, let's see what the current BID price of Apple looks like (also a synchronous function):

mxh.getprice("AAPL",pricetype="BID")

or let's check multiple prices at once (synchronous as well):

symbols = ["AAPL","GOOG","NFLX","MSFT","IBM"]
mxh.getprices(symbols,timeout=10, pricetype="BID")

you can retrieve hundreds of quotes this way. They are automatically split up in blocks of 50 symbols that are requested at once. If you want to increase this number, e.g., because your account allows a larger number of concurrent lines of real-time market data, you can do this by

mxh.getprices(symbols,timeout=10, pricetype="BID", maxdatalines = 100)

If you want to specify the primary exchange on which the market data should be gathered, use the primExchDict parameter to provide a dict with Symbol->Exchange tuples. Please refer to the source code for more information.

Placing orders

WARNING: Although I am using this interface in a productive environment, it is still in beta and it might not work properly in your environment. Please test extensively with a paper trading account before placing orders on an actual account. Use at your own risk!

In order to place an order, we first create a contract:

contract = IbHandler.makeStkContract("GOOG")

Currency is USD by default and exchange is set to SMART. If you want to change this, you can do so by

contract.m_currency = 'EUR'
contract.m_exchange = 'IBIS'	

or create the contract by calling ib.ext.Contract() directly.

Now, let's buy 100 shares of Google with a limit price of $714.23.

oid = mxh.place_limitorder(contract,100,714.23,"BUY")

All functions that are placing orders return the order id that was assigned to the order by Interactive Brokers. If you want to additionally provide your own identifier for logging purposes (see below), you can do it by

oid = mxh.place_limitorder(contract,100,714.23,"BUY",unique_ID=123)

otherwise, the current system timestamp in ms resolution is used.

Next step: Market order. Lets buy 100 Google shares at the current market price, but as a precaution, only execute the order if the current price is above $700. The current BID quote is gathered just before executing the trade

oid = mxh.place_order_quote(contract,100,700.,"BUY")

If you would like to override this precaution and hist buy the stock "blind", you can do so by

oid = mxh.place_order_quote(contract,100,0,"BUY")

At any point, open or partially executed orders are stored in the dict mxh.openorders with the order id as keys. Given the above example, you can check the current status of the order by

if oid in mxh.openorders:
	print mxh.openorders[oid]

Once fully executed (or cancelled by the exchange), they are removed from mxh.openorders, so you can use it to keep track of orders. More detailed information can be obtained through mxh.logger (see below), by overriding IbHandler.mxIBhandler.orderStatusHandler or by registering your own handler though mxh.con.register.

Advanced orders

Now, let's set the price in the middle of the bid/ask spread, but the order should not be placed if the current BID price is under $700

oid = mxh.place_limitorder_quote(contract,100,700,"BUY",ba_offset=0.5)

The order is automatically readjusted regarding ba_offest 5 times in total every 15 seconds. If you want to change that, do initialize by

oid = mxh = IbHandler.mxIBhandler(account="UXXXXXXX", limit_adjust_interval = 15, max_adjust_time=10)

You can manually trigger the readjusting of orders placed by place_limitorder_quote by calling

mxh.adjust_limits()

Further order types:

Pegged MID (exchange is automatically changed to ISLAND):

oid = mxh.place_peggedmid_order(contract,100,713,"BUY")

MOC (market on close) order. Must be submitted 10 to 15 minutes before the market closes, depending on the exchange

oid = mxh.place_moc_order(contract,100,"BUY")

Logging

The module implements the logging class. Default log-level is INFO, to change that, initialize by

import logging
mxh = IbHandler.mxIBhandler(account= "UXXXXXXX", loglevel = logging.DEBUG)

The logging instance is located at

mxh.logger

in case you want to modify it directly, e.g., to divert the output to a file.

Close connection

In order to gracefully close the connection and get (if applicable) an overview of currently open orders, call

mxh.release()