How To Use LABELS • Pine Script [OUTDATED V4] Tutorial

hi coders and traders this is Matthew
from pine script mastery calm in today's
lesson I'm gonna be addressing a
question I got from a student recently
about drawing text onto your chart so
this student asked can the text
parameter be referred to a string
variable on the plot shape function he
wants to draw the difference of two emas
converted into a string variable and
then placed into the text parameter of
the plot shape function now
unfortunately you can't do this in Pine
script because the text parameter of the
plot shape function requires a constant
variable meaning a variable that does
not change but in today's lesson I'm
going to show you how to achieve the
exact same thing plotting the difference
of two EMA's to your chart using the
label object so if that sounds like
something you'd be interested in stick
around and I'll show you how to achieve
that in this lesson so here I am in the
PI in script editor and all I've done is
create a blank script I've changed the
title and I've set overlaid it true so
let's get started with the code for this
lesson the first thing we need to do is
calculate the difference between two
EMAS
so here I'll create a comment here it
says calculate difference between 50 EMA
and 100 EMA and we're going to give this
variable a name of variable value and
this could be any variable that has an
integer or float value so what we're
going to do here is we're going to get
the EMA over the past 100 bars on the
closing price and we're going to
subtract that from the 50 EMA of the
closing price so now of course one way
you could plug this to the chart is to
just paste that in there save the script
and up here in the top left you will get
your value plotted to the chart that's
one way to achieve this but if you want
the text to be drawn directly onto your
chart beneath the candle or beneath a
price action setup or something like
that then you need to use the label
function so if we were to use the plot
shape function and we were to say draw
this on every bar on our chart and set
the text to first of all just test we
save the script we're getting a shape
drawn above all of our bars with the
text test but if we were to change this
to say two string
variable value and save the scripts get
an error the reason for that is that
this text parameter needs to be a
constant string meaning any string
variable that does not get changed in
our script at any time that doesn't help
us when we're trying to do what we're
trying to do here which is plot the
difference between these two EMAS to our
chart as text so we need to use the
label functionality so here we're going
to say create a label and the first
thing I'm going to do is create our
label text which is going to use the two
string function and what this two string
function will do is convert any variable
or value that we give it into a string
datatype so that we can pass it into the
text parameter of our label object so I
know it's a bit of a mouthful but I'll
show you and demonstrate how to achieve
that next so we're going to convert our
variable value into text that will
assign this label text variable to this
text string version of whatever this
turns out to be and next up we need to
create our label to draw this to the
chart so I'm going to just create a new
label object called our label and that's
going to be set to label dot new and
then open parenthesis to start using
this function so this label function
takes a number of function parameters
the first one is an x-coordinate and
that is going to be what bar number to
draw this on so if we just set this to
bar underscore index that will just
reference the current bar index on
whichever bar this script happens to be
running on and so by default if we leave
this as it is it'll just draw on every
bar on our chart the next parameter it
takes is a y-axis parameter and we don't
need to use this parameter because we're
just drawing it onto the bar we're not
drawing it anywhere else on our chart
except for just on the bar itself so we
can just write n/a in there the next
function parameter we need to define is
our text parameter and for this we're
going to pass our label text variable
here well you could just copy this and
paste it into here as well but then this
line gets really long so I'm gonna leave
that as that and of course you could do
any edits you wanted to with this string
such as adding on some sort of tag or
something like the simian photo
ticker ID and that sort of thing so
we'll leave that as its own variable for
now the next function parameter this
takes is an X location but that's an
optional parameter we're not going to
define that today because we've already
defined our x coordinate as bar index so
we don't need to give it an X location
we do need to give it a wire location so
we're going to set the wire lock to Y I
locked up below bar so this will set the
Y location to below the bar the next
parameter we need to put into this
function is the color so we'll give this
a color of color green you can set that
to whatever you wanted to and we'll set
the text color to color dot white so
we'll have white text over a green label
so here we need to write a few more
function parameters so I'm going to
start a new line here so I'm gonna put a
comma on the end of this line and then
continue this line on the next line with
a space one space indentation if you do
not include this indentation then the
pine Script compiler will not know that
you're trying to write this line of code
across multiple lines and you'll get a
compile error so always remember to
indent at least one space if you're
going to continue on to the next line
with your code so the next function
parameter that we're going to use here
is our style parameter and we're going
to set this to label dot and if we press
control space you'll get a list here and
if I start to write style here's a list
of all the styles we have to choose from
and there's quite a few but for today's
lesson we're just going to go with style
underscore label up and then we're going
to give it one more function parameter
which is our size we're gonna set these
size to size dot normal and now if I
save the script we will be getting
labels drawn on to our chart as you can
see here there's quite a few of them
they start to draw over the top of each
other and that's a problem yeah but we
can fix that later you can also see that
it's drawing the difference in the two
EMAS
in pits so if I add two exponential
moving averages onto my chart one is a
fifty EMA and one is a hundred EMA and
we measure out the
difference between these two EMAS you
can see we get around 89 pips which is
what this label here says that's eighty
nine point five blah blah blah pips if
you want to convert this into points in
the whole numbers all we need to do is
wrap these in parentheses and divide
this by Simeon firm in tick now if I
save the script these will be in whole
numbers and they'll be in points so here
we have 895 points between the EMAs and
if you wanted to get this in pips you
just divide this number again by 10 but
we'll leave it in points for now cuz
that's not important but before we
finish this lesson let's just tidy this
up a bit
by deleting any label that is not the
current label so in order to achieve
that all we need to do is delete our
label they came before the current label
so now if I save the script every time a
new label is drawn to the chart the
previous one gets deleted and we just
have one label drawing onto our chart so
now we're drawing the difference between
the EMA variables as a string text
variable using a label directly on to
our chart and there are multiple useful
use cases for this functionality for
example if you wanted to draw your
stop-loss price directly onto your chart
you can do so here so if I add on my
ultimate pull back indicator that I have
created in the past and I come into the
settings menu and turn on draw stop by
labels to the charm round it to a whole
number as well you can see that this is
drawing my stop-loss size in pips to the
chart which is in this case around 148
pips you rounded up to the nearest
number so that's one useful application
of this sort of information and my
favorite way to use this whenever I
detect a setup on my chart with a stop
loss in a target price I can draw that
information directly onto my chart so it
don't need to measure this out and I can
get an accurate reading of the distance
if I turn around our stop loss the whole
number off my stop loss is exactly one
hundred and forty seven point five pips
from the closing
of these set up candle so that's it for
this lesson
I hope you found that helpful if you did
and you want to learn more about pine
scripts head over to pine script mastery
com here you'll find my advanced pine
script courses and my basics course
which is free so if you want to learn
more about pine script head over here
and you'll find out a little bit more
about me and a little bit more about
pine scripts I hope you found this
lesson interesting and helpful I'll see
you the next one
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