xmatthias
commented
2 months ago Backtesting will be available when freqtrade is started in webserver mode - as the documentation also describes.
It's pointless (and confusing) to show it in any other mode - as it would suggest functionality that simply is not working 90% of the time (assuming you'll be looking at a live bot most of the time) - so you have a button you see all the time - but cannot click - for no good reason other than "i'm too lazy to read the docs".
backtesting will show the errors that appear in the UI via popup - in the case of no data:
It's clearly saying "there's no data".
Where it's looking for the data is not necessarily user_data/data/<exchange> (the default, but not guaranteed to be there) - but could also be a different location depending on config / cli arguments - so the message says what it should - while not providing missleading / potentially wrong information.
As you're correctly pointing out - reading the documentation does help - so that's what i'll recommend you to do. Please read the documentation - we recommend to at least fly over the docs from top to bottom at least once - to get to know what functionality freqtrade offers and what the limitations are.
regarding data download mode: That's something that's not implemented in a few minutes minutes - and the benefit of it is pretty small (you need a cli anyway - why provide it via UI?).
While it's something i'd like to have at some point - it's clearly not something i think has any priority - as it actually provides no benefit to the user (you'll make 0$ more - which is how i aim to judge which features should get priority most of the time).
haxwell
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Yes. In trying to get backtest mode running, I didn't realize that the code was looking for data in the ft_userdata/user_data/data/[exchange_name] directory. Of course, reading the documentation did answer that question, but that puts the onus on the user, rather than on the app.
Describe the solution you'd like I would like to be able to select backtest mode from the UI, and if there is a requirement before backtest is usable, the app should explain (perhaps by an alert dialog, or a distinct page), "Hey, you need to download some data first. This is how you do it....". In a more complete solution, the user would select backtest, there would be a UI for downloading that data, after which it would direct the user to the backtest page.
Describe alternatives you've considered I can't think of any better paths to a resolution than the general solution I have described above.
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