listening to portfolioUpdate does not work

[saveriocastellano]

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hello, I'm trying to listen to "portfolioUpdate" event in a plugin.. but with no success..
In my plugin I have defined two methods, one "portfolioUpdate" and the other one "processPortfolioUpdate". Non of these methods ever gets called :(

I have seen that the IFTTT plugin defines this method:

IFTTT.prototype.portfolioUpdate = function(portfolio) {
var message = "Gekko has detected a portfolio update. " +
"Your current " + config.watch.currency + " balance is " + portfolio.currency + '.' +
"Your current " + config.watch.exchange + " balance is " + portfolio.assert + '.';
this.send(message);
}

I guess this is also never called, as I used the same code in my plugin.

It is not clear to me how the other 'process' like events are registered by plugins (it seems that this is done automatically when the corresponding methods are defined and found).
In plugins/trader/trader.js I found the following:

this.manager.once('portfolioUpdate', portfolioUpdate => {
this.initialPortfolio = portfolioUpdate;
})

So it seems to be that the "portfolioUpdate" event is not fired, so I tried adding this:

this.manager.on('portfolioUpdate', portfolioUpdate => {
this.emit('portfolioUpdate', portfolioUpdate);
})

but still, the "portfolioUpdate" and "processPortfolioUpdate" methods in my plugin do not get called.
How can a plugin listen to such event? Does it need to explicitely register itself as a listener by calling the "on" or "once" methods of "portfolioManager" ? How can this be done? How can a plugin directly call the portfolioManager? I see that the portfolioManager is created by the treader, so i don't think it must be directly accessed by other plugins.. can you explain ?

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[cmroche]

There doesn't seem to be an entry for this plugin in subscriptions.js, adding it there and possibly this call util.makeEventEmitter(Base); ought to fix the issue.

[saveriocastellano]

thanks for your reply. In subscriptions.js I see this:

{
emitter: ['trader', 'paperTrader'],
event: 'trade',
handler: 'processTrade'
},
{
emitter: ['trader', 'paperTrader'],
event: 'portfolioUpdate',
handler: 'processPortfolioUpdate'
}

doesn't this mean that plugins can listen to 'trade' and 'portfolioUpdate' events by defining 'processTrade' and 'processPortfolioUpdate' methods?

This is exactly what I have done, but still it doesn't work...

[cmroche]

@saveriocastellano Ok I checked my past work, I got it all backwards. Those files are to register the emitters, which is correct in this case. Technically as long as IFTTT has the processPortfolioUpdate I think it should work.

[saveriocastellano]

but I'm telling you... the entry is there, and it doesn't work

[saveriocastellano]

@cmroche ok finally I have figured out what the problem with "processPortfolioUpdate" is..
it is basically due to the initialization flow (loading plugins, registering plugin handlers, starting to watch the market): what happens is that portfolioManager gets the balance from the exchange BEFORE plugins handlers are registered... this results in the "portfolioUpdate" event with the initial balance to be fired BEFORE any "processPortfolioUpdate" method from other plugins is registered as a handler for this event.

Looking at the code at the top of trader.js I saw this:

this.manager.on('trade', trade => {

if(!this.sendPortfolio && this.initialPortfolio) {
  this.emit('portfolioUpdate', this.initialPortfolio);
  this.sendPortfolio = true;
}
this.emit('trade', trade);

});

I believe this is there to notify plugins about the initial balance when the first trade takes place. Problem is that this is not so useful, because trades happen rarely and thus it is not good for plugins to not be aware of the actual balance until the first trade takes place... As as work around I added similar code to the "processCandle" method in trader.js :

Trader.prototype.processCandle = function(candle, done) {
if(!this.sendPortfolio && this.initialPortfolio) {
this.emit('portfolioUpdate', this.initialPortfolio);
this.sendPortfolio = true;
}
done();
}

with this code, the balance is notified to plugins as soon as the first candle is obtained.. this is early enough. This is probably not the best/cleanest solution but it works, and I could not find anything better... let me know what you think

[werkkrew]

Looking for a more elegant solution to this.

[askmike]

@saveriocastellano @cmroche apologies for the late reply.

The gist of the problem is that there are 2 event systems in the current Gekko, one for internal use (plugins) and one to be broadcasted upstream (via parent process to the web UI). I've just started to update the first system and remove the second one. Keep track of that here: #1850.

The current WIP branch includes this updated event. I also encourage to check out the new documentation which hopefully makes things more clear: https://github.com/askmike/gekko/blob/feature/sync-gekko-events/docs/internals/events.md

I'm closing this so we can keep all discussion in #1850.