Designing a non-trading EA for MT4/MT5 trade logging – looking for best practices

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Hi all,

I’m working on a non-trading EA whose only purpose is to log trades for journaling and statistics, and I’d like to ask for some feedback / best practices from more experienced MQL4/MQL5 developers.

The EA idea:

  • It never opens or manages trades – it only listens for account activity

  • It logs each closed trade to a CSV file

  • It stores some extra info (session, timeframe, R:R, etc.)

  • It saves entry/exit screenshots so I can review what I saw on the chart

Right now I’m doing the following:

  • In MT5, using OnTradeTransaction() and HistoryDealSelect() to detect when a position is closed

  • In MT4, checking order/position history periodically

  • Writing a CSV with columns like:
    Date, Ticket, Symbol, Type, Volume, EntryTime, ExitTime, EntryPrice, ExitPrice, SL, TP, Commission, Swap, Profit, Pips, SessionIn, SessionOut, RR, EntryShot, ExitShot

  • Using ChartScreenShot() to capture the chart when a trade opens/closes

A few questions where I’d love to hear opinions or see code examples:

  1. Partial closes & multiple deals

    • What’s your preferred way to group several deals into one “logical trade” for logging, especially on MT5 netting vs hedging accounts?

  2. Performance / reliability

    • Any tips to avoid file access conflicts or lost records when many trades close in a short time?

    • Do you buffer data in memory and flush it less often, or write one line per event?

  3. File structure

    • Is CSV still the most practical choice in your experience, or do you prefer JSON / XML / something else for external analysis?

  4. Screenshots

    • How do you handle naming and storing screenshots so they can be easily matched to trades later (ticket ID, timestamp, symbol, etc.)?

    • Any tricks to reduce disk usage without losing too much detail?

  5. Other useful fields

    • Are there any additional fields you found critical for later analysis (e.g. tags, strategy name, manual vs EA, etc.)?

I’m mainly interested in robust design and long-term reliability, so any experience, code snippets or “things you wish you’d done differently” when building similar logging tools would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their approach.

 
Terry Bogger:
best practices from more experienced MQL4/MQL5 developers

Do not use AI to generate content and post it on the forum.

Terry Bogger:
Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their approach.
Share YOUR approach (code) if you want the others to share too.
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