Learn Pine Script RIGHT NOW! 2021 BEGINNER'S GUIDE! 💹 [OLD V4 - UPDATE COMING SOON FOR V5!]

hey traders welcome to the most
comprehensive beginner guide to
pinescript
on the internet
my name is matt and i run the trading
blog and youtube channel the art of
trading
nice to meet you i've been programming
for 15 years and i've been trading
profitably
for around three years as of recording
this and during those three years i've
spent
hundreds of hours studying pine script
for the trading view charting platform
so i'm uniquely positioned to teach you
pine script in a way that most
programmers can't
not only do i have a thorough
understanding of the pine script
programming language
i also know how to use it to enhance the
profitability
of my trading strategies and in today's
video i'm going to give you a crash
course into the basics of panscript so
that you can hopefully
enhance the profitability of your own
trading the content in this video was
taken from my free
basics course over at
panstripmastery.com but i had to strip
out about an hour's worth of content
covering
the basic theory of programming in order
to keep this video under two hours
so if you're completely new to
programming and you've never written a
line of code in your entire life
then i suggest you go to
panscriptmastery.com and take my free
basics course on pinescript which goes
into much more detail about the
fundamentals of programming than this
video will
i hope you enjoy these lessons and find
them valuable if you do please help me
out by hitting the like button
it's free but it helps me out a lot by
boosting this video's rankings
and hit the subscribe button while
you're there if you want to learn more
about pinescript because i release new
video lessons on pinescript
each and every month but without further
ado i don't want to keep you waiting
let's get
into the course material i hope you
enjoy it have fun
and i'll see you on the other side
so this is just going to be quick
introduction to the pine editor
interface
so if you come down to this little tab
down here that says open pine script
editor
click on that this will bring up the
coding box for pine script
and this is great the fact that this is
inbuilt into the trading view
platform and you can load this into your
browser is amazing
if you've ever used any other
programming languages and you know how
hard it is
sometimes to download and set up an ide
integrated development environment
in order to write your code well
pinescript has all of that inbuilt into
the platform
right in your browser which is amazing
and so right here i have a blank
script and this just opens up the blank
script template
and all we have here is our header
comment our compiler directive
a study call with a title and we're
drawing the closing
price to the chart so i'm not going to
do any coding in this lesson i'm just
going to introduce you to what all these
buttons do
so up here we have open if you click on
that you can open any of the scripts
that you're working on that you've saved
if you click new you can select from a
big long list of
templates so if i click volume then
we'll get a
volume example script if i click new
blank strategy script we'll get a
strategy example script
and there's quite a few options here but
we'll just leave this blank indicator
script for now and if i hit save
now i can name the script and save it
into my script list
and then later on when i come back to up
to open it'll be listed in here
next up we have add to chart so if i
click on that that'll just add the
script code to the actual chart then we
have publish script which we'll go over
much later
this is used for publishing your scripts
publicly or privately
to the official trading view script
collection then we have the help
section there's a lot of valuable
information here you have the user
manual and if you click on these it will
open up
a new tab with the documentation
for pine script which can be really
helpful especially when you're new to
coding
in pine but perhaps the most useful
reference here that you can't get
anywhere else is the shortcuts if you
click
pine editor keyboard shortcuts that'll
bring up a list
of the keyboard shortcuts you can use in
the pine editor to
dramatically speed up your workflow and
there's a lot of
shortcuts here and we're not going to go
over all of these but if you want to
check them out
just come up to the settings menu and
click on this button here
and there's a few other options here you
can go to stack overflow where there's a
bunch of questions
and answers about pinescript we have the
pinecoders resources
and pine tutorials on the codify website
these two are very valuable resources if
you run into any issues with your
scripts and of course you can always
reference existing scripts on the public
script library
just look for open source scripts that
are trying to achieve the similar thing
that you're trying to achieve
and you can learn a lot from reverse
engineering what other pinecoders have
written
so now if i save this script and i call
it let's just call it psmc
editor intro and so now if i click save
that will add the script to my list of
indicators so now if i come up and click
open
here's the script there and uh so these
buttons up here
if i click on this i can rename the
script
if i click on this little star icon that
will add it to my favorites list so now
when i come up to open it's listed at
the top here
psmc editor intro and finally we have
this little
version number which is really cool this
is a great feature
so what this is doing is it's saving
backups of your script
as you edit it and as you save new
versions and changes to the script
so for example if i change the title
here to psmc
editor intro and i save the script
you'll see this changes to two
now if i do a little bit more let's say
let's get an rsi
input input title
rsi type input dot integer
default value 14. now if i save these
scripts it will change to three
and now if i calculate an rsi
and i save the script again and then i
copy and paste this down here
save the script we're now drawing an rsi
onto our
uh chart and if i open up this little
editor here and i click on this little
version number you can see it's listing
all of the versions that we just made of
this script
so if i click on one we'll go back to
the very beginning
if i click on three you can see that
we've got our rsi input here but we're
not drawing the rsi yet
but go to the latest version there's all
of our code
our latest version of the code so this
is awesome this means that you do not
need to backup your scripts if you don't
want to
obviously if you're making a lot of
changes to your scripts it can be
helpful to have
your own backup versions and once you
get up into the 20s or 30s this
this list can get quite long and hard to
find a previous version of your script
but if you make a long script and you
realize you screwed something up and you
can't remember when you did
it or you're not sure what you did and
you want to go back you want to revert
your script back to a previous version
you just click on this and go back to
whichever version
you need to in order to fix the problem
and start doing whatever you were trying
to do
again so that's a great little feature
there the next thing i want to mention
is the control space
tool if you start writing a line of code
and you hit control space
the pine editor will list any relevant
inbuilt
variables or function names relating to
what you've already written so here i've
written input dot
control space and this lists all of the
inbuilt input
variables that i have to choose from and
you can just click on them
in order to select them and finally if
you hover your mouse over
an inbuilt variable or an inbuilt
function
you'll get some documentation
information there and here it will tell
you
the syntax for using this inbuilt
variable or function
and it'll list all of the function
parameters you have to work with
and it'll tell you what the function or
inbuilt variable returns
and of course if you want to get more
information you can just hold down
control
or command on a mac and click on this
variable
or function and it will open up the
inbuilt pine script language reference
manual
and give you a lot more information on
whatever
function or inbuilt parameter or
variable that you're using
and you can search through here if you
want to which is really cool
and i think that's about it for the pine
editor intro that's all the most
important information you need to know
about the pine editor interface
hey coders welcome to the lesson on
comments
so comments in pine script are ways of
leaving notes
for yourself you can write them in lines
like this and if you put two forward
slashes at the
start of the line then the compiler the
pinescript compiler will ignore
this line and it will not be treated as
a line of code
the only exception for this is this line
here now this is what's called a
compiler
directive and what it's doing is telling
the pinescript compiler which
version of the pinescript syntax to
target
when compiling or interpreting this
script or the code of this script
so this line here is saying set the
version
parameter of this script to pine script
version
4. you could change this to version 3
and save it the pine code of this script
will now be compiled
using the version 3 syntax so if we were
to try to change the color
of this plot to something like color
dot red and we hit save
we'll get an error because version three
of pine script
does not know what color dot red is
that's a new
uh syntax format of pine script version
four
so if i change this back to version four
not 43
then we're not there yet if i change
that to version 4 and hit
save it will now compile and draw to the
chart
with no issues now the purpose of
allowing you to change the version of
pinescript
is to allow for backwards compatibility
so if you were to have written a script
a few years ago for example
in version three or two of pine script
syntax then you can still target that
version of code
to interpret your script that way you
don't have to convert it into the latest
version
of pine script code if you don't want to
so there are a lot of old scripts
floating around the internet that still
work
if you leave their old version compiler
directive
in so that's what this line of code does
this compiler directive
these lines of codes up here are simply
for human eyes only
and the purpose of this is to comment
your code
so that you know and others who may look
at your code later
know exactly what it is you're trying to
achieve with your code
so for example you could write here draw
the closing price through the chart
hit save and now this will compile and
pine script will ignore
this this comment this line here there's
also a hot key
you can use to do this so if you hold
control and press
forward slash pinescript will draw in
your comment tag or your comment
prefix so that's a handy shortcut that
can speed up your workflow
you can also hover over a line of code
and press ctrl forward slash and it will
comment out
this line of code so now if i save the
script it won't compile
because this line here is being ignored
and every script must have at least one
output function
call and so now this line of code is
being ignored
and treated like these lines of code so
this is handy for
commenting outlines of code that you
want to keep
but perhaps you're trying to
troubleshoot work out a bug
work out some sort of issue with your
code and you want to keep the code there
you don't want to delete it and lose it
but you also don't want
blindscript to be executing it so that's
great for isolating issues in your
scripts
and things like that you can also put
comments after a line of code
so at the end of this line of code we
could comment
we could move this comment to after the
line of code
and now this will also compile it's up
it's really a matter of preference
whether you comment
uh before the line of code or
on the line of code and it obviously
depends on how long the line of code is
whether or not you can do this because
it may be off your screen
so that's all you really need to know
about comments
that's how they function that's all you
need to know in order to use them
but why would you comment your code
what's the point
well if i put on a complicated script
i've made in the past such as my role uh
relative volume by time of day script
and i open up the source code to this
script
you can see that it's quite complicated
has a lot of lines of code here
139 lines of code and some of it can
look
fairly confusing to the human eye so
what i've done is
lace the code this script with comments
so that
each section of code is explained so
that i know what i'm trying to achieve
with that line of code
and anyone else who looks through my
source code
can see what i was trying to do and it
can help to make the source code
make more sense so sometimes the code's
not that obvious
here it's a little bit obvious because
average volume avg stands for average
volume
and we're dividing the total volume by
the look back period
but by adding this line of code here
that says calculate average
volume for this bar that can just help
make sense of this line of code at a
glance without having to
think through what exactly i was trying
to do with this line of code
so that's the purpose of comments and
that's how to use
them it's not very complicated but
they're it's a great habit to get into
early on in your coding to comment your
code so that you know what you're trying
to do
because at some point you're going to
save the script close your charts and
you won't come back to the script for
several weeks or even months
and if you don't comment your code
extensively
then there's a good chance that you will
forget what the code is doing
and you'll spend hours trying to reverse
engineer what the code does
before you can continue working on it or
improving it
so that's it for this lesson i'll see in
the next one
so hey coders welcome to the very first
pan script coding lesson in this
course this lesson is going to cover the
study annotation function
which is this guy down here so i'm going
to explain
what this does and how to use it what
all the input
parameters do so this study function is
what pinescript refers to
as a annotation function so similar to
this
as an annotation comment which tells
it's a compiler directive
it tells the pinescript compiler what
version of pinescript we're using in
this case version 4
the latest version as of making this
course
the study function does a similar thing
it tells pinescript
all of the code that follows this study
annotation function
is to be treated as a study script
or in other words an indicator script as
opposed to a strategy script
so if we were to make a strategy script
we would have access to different
functions such as all these strategy
calls
but we're not doing that today we're
going to cover strategy much later in
the course
so today we're just working with the
study function so first of all
what inputs does the study annotation
function take
it takes two titles it takes an overlay
a boolean input it takes a text format
input
it takes a precision input a scale input
and a max bar's back
input so those are the parameters we
have to work with and i'll explain what
each of them do one by one
so the first input parameter is a title
and this is the only
uh input parameter that is required so
if you
don't have this title and you try to
save your script
it won't work we'll get an error so this
first title input
is the name of the script and you can
call it whatever you want so in this
case i'm going to call it pinescript
mastery course
study example and hit save
and you'll see up here our script name
is now changed to psmc study example
now you don't need to have the title
equals here we could just do that and
that would also work
but just for clarity's sake i'm going to
leave that in because we also have
access to
the short title so i'll show what that
does now short title
is set to st let's call this um
study and now if i hit save that'll
change the name
of our script to just study and
so the reason there's two titles is that
the main title is
for explaining in detail what your
script name is
the short title is for an abbreviation
on your chart so for example i have a
indicator called the ultimate pullback
indicator
but that's a long name to have it
clutters up your chart a fair bit
so what i've used the short title for is
to abbreviate it to upi
and so when you use my ultimate pullback
indicator that's all you get on your
chart is upi so that's the purpose of
the short titles to abbreviate any long
script names you come up with
so that's those two input parameters
the next input parameter is overlay
so by default overlay is set to false
and what this means is that our script
will draw into its own
window pane its own box as you can see
here it's drawing in its own
oscillator type box so this is useful
for scripts like
rsi stochastics
even volume that sort of thing but if
you want to draw
onto your actual chart you have to set
this to true
so if i set this to true and i hit
save first of all i need to remove the
script for this
parameter to update and if we click add
to chart
the script is now drawing the closing
price to the chart instead of into its
own
oscillator box so hit save again and i
remove the script at it back
now it's in its own box so that's what
the overlay
parameter does the next input is the
format
input so this is for setting how the
values number values are formatted when
they're drawn to your chart
so we only have two formatting options
if you type format dot control space
technically three inherit price and
volume
by default it's set to inherit which
will inherit your
chart axis formatting but you can
override this with
whichever formatting type you want so if
we set this to format dot volume
and hit save you can see that it's now
drawing a one
down here if i change this to
say uh 20 000
hit save you can see that it now puts a
k
on the end and if we were to change this
to say
20 420 and we hit save
now it says 20.42 k that's useful for
creating indicators like a volume
indicator or anything that works with
volume
that sort of thing because if you set
this to press
and hit save then we'll get the exact
number there so for most scripts you're
going to want this exact number
but for other scripts especially ones
working with volume
this formatting volume format can be
helpful
so i'll leave this as inherit for now so
if i set this back to
plot the closing price and we move on
i will show you what the next input does
which is precision
so the next input parameter is precision
and this specifies how much precision to
go into with your decimal values
so if you were to set this to two it's
going to cut
all these decimal digits in the
indicator value
and it's going to round the number up to
the nearest two digits
so if i hit save you'll see that this
number will just become
0.69 and then as it gets closer to
70 it rounds up to 70 there so we only
have two decimal digits
and that's what precision does we go all
the way to one
and then we'll just get 0.7 because it's
rounding up
0.69 so for most instruments on your
chart most markets
a precision of five is about as much as
you would ever need but you can go
higher if you want to
we could go to six i'm not sure what the
maximum precision is
but it's a lot there we have um a
precision of 10.
that might be helpful for uh analyzing
cryptocurrency markets maybe
like satoshi's on some cryptocurrency
markets
but by default this is set to whatever
your
price axis is so i'll leave that as five
for now
and we'll move on to the next input
parameter which is scale
now this parameter tells pinescript
which scale to attach
your indicator values to so we have a
number of options here by default it's
set to your main price scale
but if i type in scale and then control
space that'll bring up the list of
scales we have to choose from
so if i set the scale to scale dot left
and i save the chart
save the script and i remove the script
from my chart
add it back on now you can see that the
indicator values are plotting to the
left
scale so that's what this input
parameter does it allows you to move
which scale that your indicator value is
attached to
so the final input parameter we can work
with
is max bars back so if you type in max
underscore bars
underscore back this determines how far
back your script can reference
historical bars
so if i set this to 5 now our script can
only reference the past
5 historical bars so that will be the
maximum amount of historical
values we can go back so it's very
unlikely you will ever have to use this
input parameter i'm not even sure why
it's included but i'm sure there's a
reason for it
maybe for saving the amount of memory
that a script uses when calculating its
values
if your script is failing to execute
because it's running into plane scripts
computer resource limitations maybe you
will use this feature
but that is all of the study annotation
input parameters we have to work with
for your average indicator you will only
really be working with these
three values your
main title your short title and overlay
that's the most common three inputs i
use in my own scripts anyway
so that's it for this lesson i'll see
you in the next one
hey coders welcome to the plot function
lesson
so in this lesson i'm going to explain
the plot function in great detail and
explain what all of these input
arguments
do and how to use them in your own
scripts
so for this demonstration i'm going to
leave overlay to false so that we have
our own indicator box here that'll make
it easier to see
what is happening to this line as we
manipulate it
so as always if you hover your mouse
over the plot function name you'll get a
list of the possible input variables
here we have 13 input variables i'll
explain what they all do one by one
and if by the end of this lesson you
still have questions then just simply
hold ctrl or command
and click on the function name and
you'll get a
full description of what this function
does
now the plot function only has one
required input meaning that
we only have to give it one value before
it will work
all of the other input variables are
optional and the required input is a
series
so this could be an open
close high
low or any other series of
price variables so you could also plot
indicator values so here we have an ema
50 ema we can plot that to the chart as
well
if we want to like so so let's go over
the
other input variables the next one we
have to work with is title
so this is the title of the plot
i hit save and come up to the options
menu
you can see that it is now being renamed
to this is the title and we can change
the color of it
and the style of the plot
so you could change it to an area
histogram
circles whatever you'd like
so i'm going to leave this title
variable in while we
go over the next few input variables
just so that we can see it in the
settings menu when we go up to adjust
things
so the next optional input we have is a
color so if you type in color
equals and then type color full stop and
then control space
here is the list of colors you can
choose from so we could change it to
purple
if you wanted to hit save and it will
change the color of our line
the next option we have is the line
width
so if i type in line width equals and we
could set this to by default this is set
to one
so if i hit save this won't change but
you can change this all the way up to
four
and the higher you go the thicker the
line will be
so the next input variable is style so
if you type in
style and then plot dot control space
here is a list of styles we can choose
from now this is the same list
you'll get from this uh formatting
dialog here
so there's a bunch of different styles
you can choose from for example we could
turn this into a columns
indicator if we hit save this will now
be drawn as
columns just like a volume indicator or
something like that
and so i'm not going to go through all
of these if you get time you can come in
here and play around with these
different formatting
styles and see what you prefer for
whatever you're working on
the next optional input variable is
whether or not to track
the price so if we type track price if
you set this to true
and hit save you can see that it now
draws a horizontal price line
at the last value the next input
variable is transparency
so if you type in trans and you set this
to say 50
then the line will be 50 percent
transparent
as you can see this does not affect the
horizontal track price line
the next input variable we can choose
from is hist
base which is short for histogram base
so if we type in
hist base this will be the base price
that our columns and histograms draw
from
so if we set this to say 0.68 cents
and change our plot style to columns
we save the script you can see that the
histogram
base is now 68 cents and whenever price
goes below it
the columns are drawn to the downside
and whenever price is above it it's
drawn to the upside
so i'm going to start a new line here so
that we don't go off the page
and the next input variable we can work
with is called offset
now offset tells panscript how many bars
to shift
the current plot left or right so a
negative value will shift it to the left
and a positive value will shift it to
the right
so if we wanted to shift this current
closing price plot
back 10 bars then we'd simply type in
negative 10. hit save
and then this plot should move back 10
bars
like so if you wanted to move it
10 bars forward just put in a positive
value in this case positive 10
hit save and it will now draw at the end
of the chart here
and you can go as far back as negative
9999
and that will shift the plot all the way
to the start of the chart
and now all we have on our chart is our
horizontal price line
i'll set this to zero for now and we'll
continue onwards
the next input variable is called join
and it's a boolean so if we by default
this is set to false but if we set this
to true
it will now join any plotted shapes we
have on our chart
so this only works with the style cross
and style
circles so if we type in here style
underscore
cross and hit save
you can see it now draws a line
connecting all of these crosses
if you change this to circles
it will also draw a line connecting all
of these circles
so i'll set this back to line and set
this to false
and we'll go over the next input
variable which is editable
editable tells pinescript whether or not
the user can adjust the
formatting settings for this plotted
line by default this is set to true
so if you come up into the settings menu
you can change
the style of the plot and the color
but if we set this to false and save the
script
now there is no settings option at all
because we cannot change
the uh now we cannot edit the plot style
or color so change this back to true
and we'll go over the next input
variable which is show
underscore last now by default this
input argument isn't used but what it
does is it tells
pinescript how many bars back to draw
this plot so if we set this to 10
and hit save it only plots our line
over the past 10 bars and anything
beyond that
is not plotted to the chart so i'll
change this to say
100 save it and you can see it draws
back over the past 100 bars now the
final
input argument is called display
now there's only two options we can
choose from here and that is display
dot all or none if we hit
none then this plot will not be drawn to
the chart we still get the number
in the top left here but the line itself
is not drawn
to our chart if we change this back to
all
then it will come back onto our chart
and another way of achieving this is to
just set the transparency to 100
if we hit save has the same effect
except now we have a horizontal price
line being drawn to the chart
whereas displayed on none removes all of
our
drawings all of our plotting so this is
useful for plotting graphical
information to the chart
that you don't want the user to see but
you want to be able to read the value up
here
next to the indicator name so that
brings us to the end of the plot lesson
and hopefully now you have a firm
understanding of all the different
variables you can work with
when plotting data to your chart i'll
see you in the next lesson
welcome to the data types lesson this
lesson will show you the fundamental
data types that we work with in
pinescript which will be the core
of your scripts and your calculations so
the first
data type the most common data type
you'll be working with
is integer and also float so integer
type
is just a whole number like 1 10
100 20 whatever just any
number that does not have a decimal
place after it so here we'll just
declare it as one keep things simple
the next data type is called a float
type which is
short for floating point number which is
just any number that has a decimal in it
if we type here float type and i assign
this to 0.5
this is a valid float number and the
most common floating point numbers
you'll be using are things like price
data
so right now the closing price of this
market is 1.52652
that's a floating point number so you'll
be using floating points a lot
the next data type isn't really a data
type of its own
i'm just going to show you how you can
use a mathematical operator
on your floating type variable so
here i'm going to declare a new variable
0.1
and if you use the letter e and then
let's say 2
this is saying multiply 1
by 10 to the power of 2. that's what
this little e symbol means
it's not often you'll need to use this
if ever but it's
and it's important to point out that you
can use this if you need to
in whatever scripts you're creating so
if we plot this to the chart we will get
a
10 plotted onto the chart because 0.1
times 10
to the power of 2 is 10. anyway moving
on
to our boolean type so a boolean type is
like a switch it's like on
off true false yes no in this case i'm
going to set it to
false but you could also set it to true
those are the only two
options you have when working with the
boolean data type
so call it false for now the next common
data type is the color type
so with this you could use hexadecimal
code so this
zero zero ff00 would plot bright green
to the chart
you can also include another two digits
to make this
hexadecimal code include transparency or
opacity
but i don't often use that because most
drawing functions have an
inbuilt transparency parameter which
makes it a lot easier to work with
hexadecimal colors if you're not sure
what hexadecimal colors are there's a
separate lesson on that
but as always pine script has made using
colors
easier than any other programming
language i've ever worked with
and all you need to do in order to use
their inbuilt colors is type color
dot control space and you'll get a list
of all the inbuilt colors here
and so for this example i'm going to set
it to color.red
and you'll know you found a valid color
by the
text turning red that means that we're
referencing an inbuilt variable
so the final standard fundamental data
type we can work with is a string
type so a string type is just any kind
of text
any string of characters it's not often
that you'll be working with string types
in your scripts
but there are a few use cases for this
such as referencing market names and
brokers and stuff like that
so these are the main fundamental basic
data types you will be working with the
most in your pine script
code integer whole numbers floating
point numbers
booleans colors and strings from time to
time
so let me just show you how to plot each
of these data types to the chart so
first we're going to plot integer type
and i'll give it the color that we
created here of color type
so color is set to color type just to
show you how to reference
these variables in your scripts in a
practical manner
so the next one is plot float type and
i'll give this a color of color dot aqua
then we have float type e
which i'll give a color of color dot
black
then we have the boolean type now you
can't plot boolean straight to your
chart
because it's a true or false value and
pinescript doesn't know
how to interpret that when drawing it
onto your chart so the
easiest way to plot a boolean into your
chart is to use one
for true or zero for false and
the quickest way to achieve that is to
use what's called a conditional operator
and there's a separate lesson on this if
you're not sure what this is
but basically if i type a question mark
and then i type a one
and then a colon and a zero this is
saying if
boolean type is set to true plot a one
to the chart
if it's set to false plot a zero and
i'll change this to say two so that we
can see them all separately
plotted onto our chart when the time
comes and so if i set this to let's say
color.blue and that'll do it's very
difficult to plot a string
to the chart but i'm sure you get the
idea i don't need to plot this
to the chart that'll just make this
lesson more complicated than it needs to
be
and in future lessons i'll be showing
you how to how to interact with the
string type anyway
but these is this is how you would plot
these main number and color variables
and boolean types to your chart if i
save the script now
and i add it to my chart you'll see
we're getting them
all these different colors plotted so we
have our integer in red
which is a 2 we have our floating point
is a 0.5
in aqua which is here we have our
floating point
times 10 to the power of 2 with this
little e
operator down here that's up here in
black the 10 in black
and then we have our boolean value in
blue
which is plotting a 1 or a 0 based on
whether this boolean is true you can see
it's plotting a 0 because we set the
boolean to false if i set this back to
true
save the script we'll now get a 1
plotted
in blue and so that's it for this lesson
that's how you interact with the basic
fundamental data types in pine script
we'll be covering these in great detail
in future lessons so don't worry if some
of this didn't make sense
i hope you found this helpful if not
leave a question in the comments section
and i'll see in the next lesson
hey coders welcome to the price series
lesson
this is going to be a brief overview of
how to access a candle's high
low close and open so i'm going to show
you how to create your own variables
that reference
this price data and then we'll draw it
to the chart
so this will be very simple lesson just
to introduce you to how to
access your price data in your scripts
so the first thing we're going to do is
get the price
data so we're going to have a candle
open
and by using this equal sign we're
saying set this variable
to the open price very simple
the next one is candle close so we're
setting
the candle close variable to the closing
price
next one is candle high is set to the
candle high and the last one is candle
low
it's set to this bar's low and we hit
save
the script will compile and we now have
our four
price action variables now this is the
the heart of every script by accessing
this information
you can detect all kinds of price action
setups and
patterns in the markets so the next
thing we're going to do is draw these
values to the chart so we do this
by using the plot function and if you're
unfamiliar with this function you're not
sure what it does then
go and check out the plot function
lesson that explains this function in
detail
so i'm going to keep it simple today
we're just going to plot these values
in different colors that's all we're
doing so
this first one is going to be plot the
candle open
and i'm going to set it to the color
red the next plot we're going to
draw to the chart is the candle close
we're going to set this to color dot
blue
the next variable we're going to plot to
the chart is the candle high
and we're going to set the color to
orange and now after each input you put
into a function
you separate them by using a comma i'm
not sure if i've explained that yet but
that should be pretty self-explanatory
and obvious to you
but i thought i better mention it just
in case there's any complete beginners
out there who are confused about how
this works but i'm separating each input
variable
with a comma so the last one is candle
low
candle low and we'll set this to orange
as well because
it will just make more sense when it's
drawing to our chart
so if i hit save now and i hit add to
chart
this script will now be drawing to our
chart you can see that the orange line
at the top is the candle high the orange
line at the bottom
is the candle low and the red and blue
line
in the middle is the open and closing
price of each candle
so that's the basics of accessing your
price data
in pinescript very very simple it's a
huge advantage
of pine script it's just how easy it is
to get this data
and then you can perform all kinds of
calculations on it you could
for example candle size equals
high minus low we could plot this
somewhere in here candle size color is
color.black
hit save minimize this
and now you can see all the way down the
bottom here the candle size is being
drawn
in pips so the size of this current
candle
is 9.3 pips if i draw that out
it's hard to get it accurate with the
mouse
but it is exactly 9.3 pips this candle
size
right now so in future lessons i'll show
more advanced ways of using this
information to detect things like
candlestick patterns
and all sorts of fun stuff like that but
for now i'm just going to keep it as
simple as possible
the next thing i wanted to show you in
this lesson is how to access historical
bars
so by using these values here your each
time this script is calculated
on a bar it's accessing the information
for that bar so if i hover my mouse over
this bar here
you can see i'm getting the open close
high
and low of this bar here drawn to my
chart
and this bar here was 58 pips
in size so what if i wanted to compare
the current candle
to this candle all the way back here
well
a rudimentary example i'll show you
right now so if you hold shift and click
on this bar and you can see it says zero
bars there
so this is the current bar that we're on
if we go back one it says negative one
negative two etcetera if we go all the
way back to this bar here it'll say
negative
twenty one so this is this bar is 21
bars
back from the current bar and let's say
i want to compare
the current bar's size to this bar for
whatever reason
i'll show you how to achieve that in
this lesson
so if we say candle size 21
for 21 bars ago we can write here hi
open square bracket is how we access
historical data
and then all we need to do is put in the
bar index
in relation to the current bar so the
current bar is zero
but put zero in there that is exactly
the same
as just writing high because it's
accessing the
high of the bar with the index from the
current bar of 0
which means the current bar so if we
change this to 21
that's going to get the candle high from
21 bars ago which is this bar here
so if i write high in brack
in square brackets 21 it's very
important that you use square brackets
and not
circle curved brackets or any other kind
of bracket
because according to pine script syntax
that's how it knows
what you're trying to do if you change
the type of bracket it won't know what
you're trying to achieve with these
brackets but square brackets are for
accessing
historical series so by minus the high
21 bars ago with the low from 21 bars
ago
and we plot it to our chart 21
say we change the color to color dot
purple
we hit save you can see there
it says 58 pips so the current bar's
candle size in pips is 9.4 which is here
in black
and the candle size of 21 bars ago
is 58 pips and if i hover my mouse over
this bar from 21 bars ago
you can see that the black number the
current size changes to 58 pips
and now the purple line is showing the
candle size
from 21 bars back from that bar
so if you go all the way back here you
can see that that says 23.5 pips
in the in black if i hover my mouse over
there
the purple value says 23.5 pips
so that's drawing the candle size from
21 bars ago
so that's how price series works and
this works for anything
that references historical bars so
any indicator rsi ema etc
so if you had the atr value atr of
a 14 length period you could access the
atr
21 bars ago using the same price series
so if i wanted to draw the atr
of 21 bars ago i just write it out like
that
21 in square brackets is referencing the
atr value from 21 bars ago
color can be color.green hit save
the script will compile and it is now
drawing the atr value from 21 bars ago
so that's how price series works that's
how you access information from
historical bars
this applies to all indicators all price
action
variables including volume so we could
just as easily change this to say
volume from 21 bars ago hit save
and we're now drawing the amount of
volume that was printed to the chart
from 21 bars ago
so that's how you manipulate and access
historical bar values
in pine script it's very simple very
easy to do and in future lessons we'll
use this information to detect
complex candlestick patterns and perform
various forms of analysis
so that brings me to the end of this
lesson i'll see you in the next one
so in this lesson i'm going to explain
variables and how to declare them and
manipulate them
so variables are defined by what's
called a
identifier and an identifier is just a
tag a word that you use to reference
the value that you assign the variable
if you wanted to create
say a variable that counts green candles
on the charts you could call your
variable
green candle count
and now this is a valid identifier now
identifiers cannot
include any special characters so you
can't put any hashtags or
brackets or any of that sort of thing in
your identify it has to be
letters or digits so you could put
a one on the end or you could put a
number anywhere in
the identifier but the identifier cannot
start
with a digit so if you put a number at
the beginning of the variable
when we save the script we'll get an
error
because pinescript is interpreting this
as a value before it
sees it as a variable so if i remove
that
save the script the script will now
compile without errors
so in order to assign a variable a value
you need to use just one equals sign so
this will initiate
the green candle count variable with a
value of zero
and this will set green candle count to
uh
the data type integer which are whole
numbers
if i set this to 0.1 then this would
become a float
and i'm not going to go over all the
different types you can assign variables
to in this lesson because there's a
separate lesson for that
i'm going to change this back to a 0 for
an integer since we're going to use this
variable to count the green candles on
our chart
so now i'm going to show you how to use
an if function in order to increase this
green candle count as the script detects
bullish candles on the chart now if you
don't understand any of this or how this
if function works don't worry there's
another lesson that covers it in great
detail
but just for today's example just to
show you how you can manipulate
variables i'm just going to use this
very rudimentary example
so first we need to detect if the
closing price is
higher than the opening price that's the
definition of a bullish candle
and then i'm going to increment or
increase this green candle count by one
so in order to do that you cannot use
just a single equal sign
to change the value of an existing
variable
once a variable has been created you
need to use what's called the assign
operator which is a colon and then an
equals
so this is initiating the variable and
you need to use this
format when you're using the variable
for the very first time
in your script but once you've declared
the variable
you then need to use the assign operator
in order to manipulate its value
so right now it's set to zero and we
want to
add one to whatever this value is so
we're going to say green
candle count plus one
and there's another lesson on all the
different mathematical arithmetic
operators
so i'm not going to go into detail about
them either but this is how you would
add
one the value of one to the green candle
count variable
so now if i change this plot to plot the
green candle count
i save the script add it to the chart
see it's only going to plot one
on each bar that is bullish so if a bar
is bearish
at plot zero and if a bar is bullish it
plots one
that's because of the way pine script
executes these scripts
so all of this code is executed
repeatedly on each new historical bar
what that means is that this green
candle count is being lost
on every new bar that this script runs
on because it's being set back to zero
and the whole variable has been created
again so there are a couple of ways
you can store this green count variable
across
all of your historical bars as the
script executes
the easiest way that we can do this in
pine script
as a version four you can just put the
three letter
tag in front of this variable of var
if you put type var and then a space
what this will tell pine script is that
this
variable green candle count is only to
be initiated
once so on the very first bar this
script runs on
it will create the green candle count
variable with a value of zero
and it will never do this again so on
each successive historical bar
it's going to keep this value and so
whatever we do to it on the next
bar will be saved across all the bars so
now if i save the script
we'll get a total count of just how many
green bars were plotted
from the very first historical bar the
script ran on all the way up to the
current bar
so we had 7 375 green candles
that this script detected from the very
first bar
it ran on now there is a limitation to
how far back
pine script can run but it's quite high
and if we wanted to know
exactly how many you could just change
this to say total candle count
change all of these variables and get
rid of this if clause
and now it's going to count every bar
that it runs on
so if i save the script you can see that
it ran on 14
881 historical bars so that's all you
really need to know about variables how
to declare them
how to use identifiers remember they
can't start with a digit
they can start with an underscore but
that is the only
special character that you can use to
declare your variables with
those are the three things to that you
really need to remember that your
identifiers variable identifiers cannot
start with a digit
they can have numbers in them and
underscores once they're assigned
if you do not use this ver operator this
var
operator to identify this variable as a
variable that should only be initiated
once then it will be
re-initialized on every historical bar
so that if we save this it will now say
one
because it's only executing on one bar
and then
pinescript is wiping the stored value
and setting it back to zero each time so
that's the second thing to remember
the third thing to remember is that if
you want to assign an existing variable
to a new value
you need to use the assign operator
which is a colon and then an equals
and one last thing to note is that you
can also not set
a variable to an existing variable name
so you can see here that hi is an
inbuilt variable
that references the candle's high price
if you were to try to use that in your
own script
as your own variable the script will
compile but it does get
very confusing to use in built variables
for your own variables for one thing
you'll know
if you're using an existing variable by
the color coding
in every inbuilt function or variable or
operator
in pinescript has a color code so
all your variables will be white in text
any existing variables will be red
or some shade of blue so that's the
easiest way to know if you're using
an existing variable name and that's it
for this lesson
see in the next one
welcome to the fill lesson in this
lesson i'll show you how to use the fill
function
in order to fill the background color of
your chart between two values
now the fill function allows you to use
up to seven
input arguments but it requires at least
two plot arguments or horizontal line
arguments
i'll explain that right now so the first
thing we need to do is define
our initial plot so in this case i'm
going to call it h
for high and we need to define our
second
plot value so i'm going to call mine l
for
low so now if i hit save
we'll be drawing the high and the low of
price
to our chart and i'm going to show you
how to fill
a background color between these two
lines so now we write in
fill here and again if you hover your
mouse over this function it will tell
you the inputs it takes
and there's two options here we can work
with plot
or h line which is short for horizontal
line
first i'll show you how to use plot and
then we'll go over horizontal line
so in order to plot between these two
values we need to
write in h for high
and then l for low and we'll change the
color to color.red
if we hit save we've now changed the
background color of the chart between
these two values to red
and just like the plot function we can
also change the title
and now if i hit save and come up to the
settings menu
here's our fill and we can change the
color
and the opacity or transparency
i've already shown you the color input
so the next input value is transparency
so if you type in trans
set this to say zero
and we hit save it'll now be a solid red
color
the next input variable is editable so
if we set this to false
now we will not be able to come up to
the settings menu and
change our fill color or transparency
the only variables we can adjust now are
the plot the two plot lines so if we
turn them off
we now have a solid colored fill on our
charts
which actually looks pretty cool looks
like some sort of artistic drawing
and when we're working with the fill
function using two plots
we also get access to one more input
variable that's not available if these
were h lines
horizontal lines and that variable is
the show last
variable so exactly the same as the plot
function
if we type in here say show last equals
50
then that will only show this fill color
over the past 50 bars so if i zoom out
the chart a little bit
it'll stop plotting back here if we hit
save
there you go it's only filling back 50
bars
it's still plotting the lines that we
have here
over historical price action but if we
wanted to
have this consistent with the fill
function we just
type in the same thing here so show last
equals 50
show last equals 50. if we hit save then
all of this drawing will stop at 50 bars
back
so now i'll show you how to use the h
line option
so let me first delete these two and
we'll call this one
h line 1 is set to
h line and we'll set this to 0.70
so that's going to set our horizontal
line to 70 cents
then we'll declare h line 2 and this
will also be a h line
and we'll set this to 0.69 so 69 cents
and now we have our two h line values
so now if we change the fill function to
reference these two values
and we hit save you can see we have an
error here
so you can't just fill two colors
between the charts you actually have to
plot something to the chart
so here i'm going to use plot close and
i'm going to set display
to display dot none if we hit save
that should fix the error there we go
and now we're filling
a red color between 70 cents and 69
cents
as a horizontal line so i've come up
into the settings menu here
or first of all let me change this back
to true
and then if we come up to the settings
menu and we turn fill off
you can see we have a horizontal line
being drawn at 69 cents and a horizontal
line being drawn at 70 cents
and then our fill is just filling in the
color between
those two horizontal lines that brings
me to the end of this lesson
i'll see you in the next one
alright so welcome to one of the most
important lessons in this basic series
in this lesson i'm going to show you how
to get all of the different data type
user inputs
i'm not going to show you how to
manipulate them or use them in this
lesson because there's quite a few and
some of them are quite complex to work
with
but i wanted to keep this lesson concise
because
i feel like it's a good idea to have all
of this information in one place
for you and later down the line when
you're making more complex scripts you
can reference this lesson
to know how to get exactly the type of
user input that you need
so first of all there are eight
different data types
that you can request from the user and
by that i mean
uh different inputs you can provide in
your settings menu
i'm going to go over all of them in
today's lesson and then i'll show you
how to manipulate each of them in a
different lesson
so the first data type i'm going to show
you how to work with is a boolean
value we're going to get a boolean input
value and i'm going to call this input
variable
input boolean and it's going to be set
to
the input annotation function is the
official name for this
and it's just an input function that's
going to add the capability
to change this value in the settings
menu
so if you hover your mouse over the
input function it will tell you all of
the different
input parameters that it can take and
i'm going to walk you through each of
these
so for a boolean input it's quite simple
to set up
we need to title the input first of all
so i'm going to call this
on slash off and it's going to be set to
the type
of and so now if you type input dot
and then press control space it will
bring up the list of inputs you can
choose from
so we're going with bool here so we
click bull which is short for
boolean so an input boolean takes
a minimum of three input parameters so
we've set our title
we've set the data type to bull now we
have to give it a default value
so d e f v a l def val
is short for default value and we need
to tell
pinescript what to set this input
boolean to
by default and so in this case i'm going
to set it to true
and now if we hit save and add
to our chart we're now plotting the
closing price to our chart but if we
come up to the settings menu here
we have our on off input you can turn
that on
or off by clicking on it and that will
change this check mark box
so if i turn this off hit ok now this
input boolean
is set to false and if we reference this
input variable anywhere else in our
script it will now be turned to false
instead of true
and that's it for an input boolean the
input boolean is really easy to work
with
so let's move on to the next input type
which will be
integer which is just another word for
whole number
so i'll type in here get an integer
input
value and we'll call this variable input
integer and it's set to the input
function
it's going to be titled whole number
its type is going to be input
dot integer now the integer input type
can take several different input
parameters
so we can set the default value we'll
set this one to seven
you can set the minimum value so if you
type min val
that will set the lowest point that the
user
can change this input setting to so here
we'll set it to negative 10. and we can
set the max
value or maxval in this
example i'm going to set it to positive
10. so now if i hit save
and come up to the settings menu we now
have a new input setting
whole number and we can change this all
the way up to 10 and it will not go
beyond 10
if i type in 99
it'll just change it to 9 and negative
10
is our minimum value it's as low as we
can go
but there's a couple more options we can
add if we want to
we could set the step of this so if i
set this to step equals two
and we hit save i come up to the
settings menu
now whenever i click the up or down
arrow it's going to add or minus
2 to this number so if i hit up it goes
to 9
and if i hit up now it won't go to 10
because it's trying to set this to 11.
if i go down and go to 7 5 3
1 negative 1 negative 3 negative 5
and negative 7. so you can see it's
changing in steps
of 2. if i change this to 5
and i change the default value to five
hit save
now when i hit the up arrow it's going
to go to 10
when i hit the down arrow twice it'll go
to zero so that's changing this value in
a step of five the next input parameter
we can use is
options so if i type in here options is
set to
and then we open two square brackets for
our series or
list i can now define a set of options
that the user can choose from so if i
set
the options to one comma two comma
three comma four comma five
i hit save the script will compile
come up to the settings menu and now we
can choose
our value from this drop down box of
options
and notice we cannot change this value
anymore using our keyboard we can only
select
from the options that we have provided
the user
which means that our step uh input
parameter is no longer relevant
and one other important thing to note
with this is that you cannot set a
default value outside of your
set options so if i change this back to
seven and hit save
we will get an error down here as you
can see here
7 is not in 1 2 3 4 5 which is our
options those are all the different
input parameters you can use for
integer inputs and this should cover all
of your needs
when making any type of script that uses
integers
so the next input type we're going to
cover here is
a float get a float input value
and we're going to call this input float
it's going to be assigned to the input
function it's going to have a title of
a decimal number it's going to have a
type
of input dot float and in this example
we're going to set the default value to
negative 0.5
if i hit save this will now add a new
input variable to our settings menu and
if you don't set a minimum value or a
maximum value then you can set this to
whatever you want
and there's no limitation but if you do
want to set a minimum value and a
maximum value you can do so
so if we type in here minimum value is
set to negative
3.14 notice we can use decimals now
because this is a floating point number
we can set the max val to 3.14
and positive 3.14 is our maximum value
we can set the step to 0.2
and if we hit save that will set up our
input parameter
with these settings so if we go up to
the options menu
we can now change this by a step of 0.2
and we can go all the way up to 3.1
but i can type in a 4 on the end there
hit ok
and now we have our maximum floating
point input
value set there you can also use the
options setting here
so if i replace this step with options
is set to say 0.0
negative 10.5
and negative 0.5
we close that off hit save
we can now come up to the settings menu
and we have a drop down box just like
the whole number input
and we can only choose from the input
options that we defined
here so those are the only input
parameters we can work with with integer
and float and that should cover all of
your needs in all of your various
scripts
so the next input type we can work with
is
symbol so symbol is basically your
market a market ticker
any instrument so here on canadian
dollar against the swiss
franc if you wanted to change what data
your script is referencing
you can use a symbol input to achieve
that so here we're going to say get a
symbol input value so we're going to
create a
new variable here called input symbol
it's going to be assigned to the input
function we're going to give it a title
of
symbol and it's going to be a type of
input
dot symbol and the symbol import
function
is similar to the boolean input function
in that it requires a default value
for before your script will compile the
default value takes a text input because
this is a ticker
and you can reference any market here so
the format is first you need to set the
exchange
and the second value is your ticker id
so for example if i wanted to access the
australian dollar against the us dollar
i would type in here an exchange name so
in my case i use zoanda
so i'll type in oanda colon aud
usd if i hit save
the script will compile and now my
script can access data
from awanda australian dollar
versus us dollar so you could also
change this to something like
uh the bats exchange and access apple
stock
value hit save come to the settings menu
and we're now
referencing apple's stock price you
could also change this to spy
hit save come up to the settings menu
and we're now referencing the spy etf
so those are the only input parameters
we have to work with
when it comes to symbol inputs you can
only set the default symbol you cannot
use
options like you can on these other
input types
and so the user can type in whatever
symbol they want into this input
setting so let's move on to the next
input type which is
resolution or time frame so here i'm
going to say get a resolution
input value and we're going to call this
input value input resolution
it's going to be set to the input
function like all the others going to
have a title of
resolution and it's going to have a type
of
input dot resolution now it also
requires a default value
so here i'm going to give it a default
value of 60
and this number is in minutes so if i
hit save
the script will compile and now we have
a new input variable
of resolution and this resolution
comes as a drop down box
in the most common uh denominations so
one minute three minute five minute
and so on all the way up to the monthly
chart so this is a useful input if your
script accesses
data from other time frames and i'll
show you how to do that in
other lessons so that's how you would
access other symbols and other time
frames
let's move on to the next input function
type which is
session or time zone so here we're going
to get a session
input value and it's going to be called
input session it's going to be set to
the input function with the title of
session a type of input dot
session and this default value is going
to be a string
input and it's going to be set to 24 x 7
or 24 7. if i hit save
the script will compile and we now have
a new option
up here where we can choose and select
from
two different times and that will give
us the time session
so if i set this to 1am and i set this
one to 3
am hit okay now we could use this
input session variable to check
something that our script is doing to
see
if that something is occurring within a
certain time zone
so this would be helpful for something
like detecting trading sessions
market opens market closes and that sort
of thing
you could also change the default value
to reference these sorts of numbers so
we could say 0
1 0 0 0 3 0 0
if we hit save that will give us the
same
settings as we put in manually you could
change this to anything so we could
change this to zero three zero zero and
change this to thirteen hundred
hit save and there you go you're
referencing between 3 a.m to 1 p.m
so this is in 24 hour time and so that's
it for the session
input value let's move on to the final
input data type we can choose from which
is
source so we're going to get a source
input value and it's going to be
called input source it's assigned to the
input
we're going to call it source it's going
to be of type
input dot source and its default value
is going to be
a close price so source
is a price action source it's a high a
low
close or an open if i hit save here
and we'll now have a new input variable
called source with a drop down box of
all the different source
options so here we have our candle open
price
high low and closing price and then we
also have the high and low
the high low close and the open high low
close
so these values here are a little bit
more exotic and they're for specific use
cases
whereas these four here are your more
traditional inputs for things like
calculating an rsi
an ema or that sort of thing so for
example
say you wanted a rsi to be able to be
calculated on the opening price instead
of the closing price
you could use a source input to achieve
that and i just realized
i lied this was not the last input type
there's one more
input type the eighth input type we can
use
is a string input so in this case we're
going to get
a string input value
it's going to be called input string
it's going to be set to input
the title of string a type of
input dot string
and a default value of let's just say
text if i hit save here
the script will compile and now at the
bottom of our settings menu
we have a new input type of text and we
can change this
to whatever we like hit okay
and you can see that our input string
variable has now changed
to whatever we want to put in here the
most common way you would use this
is to create options so here we can also
create an options menu
where we give the user a set of options
to choose from
so we could say a b and c
choose from any of these three options
if we hit save
we come up to open our settings menu
again our string input has now turned
into a drop down box
input so we could choose from a b or c
i'm not going to go over the various use
cases for this particular input
or any of these inputs in this lesson
because this lesson will be far
too long i'm going to break down each
data type itself in its own lesson
so that brings me to the end of the
input lesson
here is all the code we have written as
always if you have any questions about
any of these
leave them in the comments section and
i'll respond as soon as i can
otherwise i will see you in the next
lesson
hi traders welcome to the alert
condition function lesson
in this lesson i'm going to show you how
you can add alert condition
functionality to any script that you
write or any existing script that you
find that doesn't already have
alert functionality so let's open up a
blank script here
and to keep things simple for today's
lesson we're just going to identify
higher high higher close candles and
lower low
lower closed candles so for a higher
high high close we just need the closing
price to be greater than
the previous candles high and for a
lower low level close we just need it to
be lower than the previous candles low
so these are the two conditions that we
we are going to use in our
lesson today so i save the script add
this to my chart
so we're just going to plot the closing
price it's not important what we plot
here we're just going to focus
on the alert condition function
so in order to add alert functionality
to your script
and make it possible to select your
script from this condition box
you need to have an alert condition
function call in your script and this
function
takes three input parameters or
arguments
a condition which is a boolean variable
it takes a title which is a string
variable and a message which is also a
string variable
so the condition is whichever condition
you want to trigger the alert
and the title is what shows up on your
screen when the alert
is triggered or the subject of your
email if you get email alerts
and the message is the body of the
message text
so for this example we're going to
first trigger an alert for higher high
higher close candles so to do that we
can just put in
our boolean condition as the first
argument or parameter for this
function you could also specify
this as the condition by writing in
condition equals
and then your boolean conditions here
but you don't need to do that
pinescript knows that the first
parameter of this function
should be a boolean input the next thing
we need to do is title this i'm going to
title this
hire hi hi close alert and i'm going to
give it a message
and in this message if you come up to
the alert dialog box
and scroll down to the message box here
you'll notice
this blue question mark
button if you click on this it will list
the special placeholders that you can
use
to access variable values in an alerts
message
so for example if we wanted to
include the ticker name of the market
we're on right now we're on bitcoin
xbt usd would be the ticker
we could say here higher high higher
close alert four
and then open two curly brackets right
in ticker
and close those brackets off and this
placeholder would be replaced
with xbt usd when the alert's triggered
or it'll be replaced by whatever ticker
you have loaded
onto your chart when you set the alert
so that's it it's that simple obviously
the more difficult
part of alert conditions in your scripts
is identifying the conditions to trigger
the alert today's example is very simple
we're just looking for higher high
higher closed candles
but you can use this alert condition
function to trigger alerts for
any condition that you want your script
to
fire an alert for so now if i save the
script
we've added alert functionality to it if
we come up and click on this create
alert button or press alt
a or command a on a mac we can now
select our script
from the condition drop down box and
that's this script name here if you
select this
by default it's going to go to our
higher high high close alert condition
leave that as it is and now you can set
up this alert however you want to
so you can set it to once per bar close
and then the alert will only be
triggered
when the signal is confirmed by a bar
close
you can set the expiration time the
various actions you want say
if you want to push notification on your
mobile phone
or a pop-up on your chart or you want
the
trading view platform to send you an
email when the alert's triggered
or this web hook url is for third-party
apis we're not going to get into that
today
and finally you can also play a sound if
you want to
to notify you that you need to come and
check your charts
oh and then finally there's send email
to sms
if you want to use that then we have
alert name
this is different to the title this is
your alert name that shows up
in your alert list
and so you can use this alert name to
categorize your alerts
if you have a lot of them and then
finally we also have a bunch of
other placeholders here which i'm not
going to go into too much detail about
right now
because as i said you can just click on
this little question mark button it
explains in great detail
how they all work but you can even
reference
plot values in your messages
so if you were to write in here plot
underscore zero
within two curly brackets in this case
our very first plot is this one here
it's just plotting the closing price
this blue number up here if i were to
add in that
plot placeholder when the alert is
triggered
let's come up here and click show pop-up
i'll turn those off and i'll click once
per bar
close if i click create here
when this bar closes it should trigger
an alert since this
candle here is a high higher closed
candle so let's wait and see what
happens
there we have it so notice that the xbt
usd placeholder has been has been
replaced
and we also added in our plot underscore
zero
in this case that's just the closing
price so this is useful for third-party
automation
or for passing information to your alert
that is relevant to your trade
management so for example you could pass
an rsi value or some
some such thing but anyway that's how
you would set up an alert that's a
single alert function call
and that's how you set up your alert in
the alert dialog box
but what if you wanted to have multiple
alerts well
that's easy as well you can just copy
this line of code paste it down here
change this to llc for lower low lower
close
if this boolean variable is true then
this second alert function
will be triggered but only if we have
set
the alert in our alert dialog box so if
i save the script now
we come back up to our alert dialog box
when we select our script now
under condition if i click on that
we will now have multiple options here
below our condition
to select which alert we want to trigger
so if we just wanted higher high high
close alerts to trigger
we'd click on that if we wanted lower
low low close alerts to trigger
we click on that one and set up the
alert settings
as we desire so that's how you can use
multiple
alert types in your scripts if that is
something you want to do
but otherwise if you want to merge your
alerts
so you only want to trigger one alert if
either of these candlestick patterns are
detected
you can just type in here higher high
higher close
or lower low lower close
we can change our alert titles here
now if i save the script we come up to
our alert box
select our script from condition we now
have a higher high higher close slash
lower low lower close alert
and this alert will be triggered if
either a high high high close candle
or a lower low lower closed candle is
detected
and so for most scripts just leaving it
like that would
suffice but if you're using third-party
automation
um which is a very complicated thing
that we'll get into much later in the
course
then you may want to separate your
alerts like this but that about sums it
up for this lesson we'll be adding alert
functionality to a lot of the scripts
that we write in this course
so this is just a quick crash course
into how the alert condition function
works
and we'll go over much more practical
applications of this function
in later lessons so i hope you found
this lesson interesting
and i'll see you in the next one
so i figure it's probably a good idea to
show you guys how to do your own
research regarding scripts if you run
into a problem that this course doesn't
cover
and you want to uh for example there's a
few inbuilt indicators that don't exist
in trading view at the moment a good
example of one of those is the ichimoku
cloud
i had a client ask me to add a ichimoku
cloud filter to a strategy script that i
was creating for him and i had to go and
find
the source code someone else had written
to plot the ichimoku cloud onto the
chart
because tradingview didn't have it as an
inbuilt function
so i'll show you how i went about that
here so
basically you just come to the scripts
page on your trading view home page
and here are all the categories you
could search through but it's if you
know what you're looking for you just
come up here
now click on this little drop down box
come to scripts
and just type in ichimoku cloud or
whatever you're looking for
so now you just scroll through the list
of indicators and look for one that
meets the description of what you're
looking for
maybe something other than plebs be
tripping
uh let's go to page two
um here we go harry potter he's h potter
he's a really good
pine script coder uh very famous on the
tradingview platform for creating great
scripts
this one here has nearly 15 000 likes so
you must have done something right here
so you can see here this is actually
written in pinescript version 1
back in 2014 because there is no version
annotation comment but if you wanted to
steal this code
and use it in your own scripts you could
just copy
everything here open up your pinescript
editor
and just paste in this code here
if you save the script just call it uh
ichimoku here i'll call it psmc
ichimoku save the script and now if you
add it to the chart
you'll have this custom ichimoku
code here working but now say you want
to convert this into version 4 that so
that it plays well
with your um with whatever modern script
you're writing
just add in the version annotation
comment here
set it to version 4. if you save the
script you'll get a list of errors
and depending on how complex the errors
are this could be easy or difficult to
convert
if this happens to be a version three
script then you'll have this button here
that just says convert to version four
and if you click on that it'll convert
all of the code for you
into version 4. otherwise you're going
to have to do it manually if it's a
version 2
or 1 script you're going to have to
convert this manually
so here we have a list of errors and
they're all color errors so it's pretty
easy to work out
in the older versions of pine script
they did not have the
color dot prefix for for color types
so now if we just go through and add
this to all of the color
variable names here and this one here
now if we save the script it will
compile without any errors
it's now in version four you can come in
and edit what you need to
and now you have your own ichimoku cloud
script
to work with in your own scripts so now
you could reference any of these
variables to check your prices above or
below it
and whatever other filters you want to
check for and then you could just come
in and tidy up the code if you wanted to
and yeah and then now you have your own
ichimoku code to reference in your
script
so i know this is a pretty common sense
lesson basically if you run into a
problem just search the script library
see if someone's already written a
script to achieve what you're trying to
achieve and if they have
just borrow the code of course it's
always good to reference
the person who originally wrote the code
in your own source code that's a good
matter of courtesy but most pine coders
out there won't mind unless it's a
particularly sophisticated body of work
or they specifically request
credit most pi encoders won't care if
you just steal their work i know i don't
don't forget you also have the power of
google so you could type in here
pinescript
ichimoku and you may come across
material
here that is not covered on the trading
view platform itself
and that's all i had to say for this
lesson and one last resource i forgot to
mention is if you come to my website at
the artoftrading.com
i have a list here i've got plenty of
resources here about trading in general
but i also have a list here
of all of my free published indicator
scripts
and the source code to most of them is
included as well
so you can also use this as a resource
so i hope you enjoyed the basics course
material if you found it interesting you
want to learn more about panscript head
over to panscriptmastery.com i have a
bunch of courses here
the free basics course has a few more
lessons in it that weren't included
in today's youtube videos if you want to
learn a little bit more about the basics
this is a great place to start there's
also a discount code in there if you
finish the course
for the mastery course and the mastery
course is my flagship program i go in a
lot of detail here
there's 91 lessons and counting i think
by the time i release this video they'll
be closer to 100. i cover the basics of
panscript everything in the pinescript
basis course is in this course as well
if you want to skip that and come
straight to this course
but this one has a lot more info um on
more advanced subjects like how to use
indicators
um how to detect specific candlestick
patterns
um even how to create your own
profitable trading strategy scripts
to run through the trading view
automatic back testing
system i also publish updates to the
panscript programming language as they
release
any important updates that the team
makes the pan script i'll create a
lesson
covering that new feature or that change
to panscript
and if that's not enough pan script for
you there is my indicators and strategy
scripts course
where i teach you how i created every
single one
of my publicly released indicators for
the trading view
charting platform and there's well over
20 of them here
including a bunch of profitable strategy
scripts that i've created
there's three new lessons coming soon
covering three various different trading
strategies that i've created
using panscript that are actually pretty
profitable
so if you're interested in really really
taking part script to the next level
taking your scripting to the next level
and shortcuting a lot of the hard work
by stealing all of my best work
then maybe check this course out as well
i even have
a section in here on autoview so if
you're a forex trader
there is this fantastic chrome browser
plugin that allows you to automate your
trading strategies
and i have a few running right now that
are automatically executing
trading strategy scripts that i've
written um while i'm asleep it's
absolutely brilliant couldn't speak more
highly of it
and i have a bunch of new lessons coming
for this
uh browser plugin in the weeks to come
it's phenomenal
anyway that's it for today's video i
hope you enjoyed if you made it to the
end
you did a phenomenal job i can see the
back end statistics for this course and
you'd be surprised at how few
traders actually complete the basics
course so if you did complete this video
you are already in the top one percent
of traders in terms of motivation
so best of luck with your trading i am
very confident that you are going to be
successful if you keep putting in this
sort of work
see in the next video take care and good
luck with your trading