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Introduction to Routines

Overview​

OpenBB Routines allows users to capture and write simple scripts for automating processes and repetitive tasks. In essence, these are text plain-text files that can be created or modified in any basic text editor with the only difference being the .openbb extension.

Other software like STATA, SPSS, and R-Studio share similar functionality in the area of Econometrics and the OpenBB routine scripts venture into the area of financial analysis and data collection to speed up the process.

Routines make it easy to automate a series of processes, and this includes mining and dumping large amounts of data to organized spreadsheets. Making use of --export and --sheet-name, data collection is more efficient and reliable, with results that are easily replicable.

A pipeline of commands is difficult to share, so to encourage users to share ideas and processes, we created Community Routines for the OpenBB Hub. Routines can be created, stored, and shared - executable in any OpenBB Platform CLI installation, by URL.

Pipeline of Commands​

One of the main objectives of the OpenBB Platform CLI is to automate a user's investment research workflow - not just a single command, but the complete process. This is where the pipeline of commands comes in, running a sequence of commands.

An example of a pipeline of commands is:

/equity/price/historical --symbol AAPL/../../technical/ema --data OBB0 --length 50

Which will perform a exponential moving average (ema) on the historical price of Apple (AAPL).

Step-by-Step Explanation​

This will do the following:

  1. equity - Go into equity menu.

  2. price - Go into price sub-menu.

  3. historical --symbol AAPL - Load historical price data for Apple.

  4. .. (X2) will walk back to the root menu.

  5. technical - Go into Technical Analysis (technical) menu.

  6. ema --data OBB0 --length 50 - Run the exponential moving average indicator with windows of length 50 (--length 50) on the last cached result (--data OBB0)

Routine execution​

Run a routine file from the main menu, with the exe command. Try, exe --example, to get a sense of what this functionality does. Below, the --help dialogue is displayed.

/exe -h
usage: exe [--file FILE [FILE ...]] [-i ROUTINE_ARGS] [-e] [--url URL] [-h]

Execute automated routine script. For an example, please use `exe --example` and for documentation and to learn how create your own script type `about exe`.

optional arguments:
  --file FILE [FILE ...], -f FILE [FILE ...]
                        The path or .openbb file to run. (default: None)
  -i ROUTINE_ARGS, --input ROUTINE_ARGS
                        Select multiple inputs to be replaced in the routine and separated by commas. E.g. GME,AMC,BTC-USD (default: None)
  -e, --example         Run an example script to understand how routines can be used. (default: False)
  --url URL             URL to run openbb script from. (default: None)
  -h, --help            show this help message (default: False)

For more information and examples, use 'about exe' to access the related guide.

Basic Script​

The most basic script style contains 2 main elements:

  • Comments: any text after a hashtag (#) is referred to as a comment. This is used to explain what is happening within the line below and is ignored when the file is executed.
  • Commands: any text without a hashtag is being run inside the CLI as if the user had prompted that line in the terminal. Note that this means that you are able to create a pipeline of commands in a single line, i.e. equity/price/historical --symbol AAPL --provider fmp is a valid line for the script.

For instance, the text below corresponds to the example file that OpenBB provides.

# Navigate into the price sub-menu of the equity module.
equity/price

# Load a company ticker, e.g. Apple
historical --symbol AAPL --provider yfinance

# Show a candle chart with a 20 day Moving Average
/technical/ema --data OBB0 --length 20

# Switch over to the Fundamental Analysis menu
/equity/fundamental

# Show balance sheet
balance --symbol aapl --provider yfinance

# Show cash flow statement
cash --symbol aapl --provider yfinance

# Show income statement
income --symbol aapl --provider yfinance

# Return to home
home

Getting started​

As a starting point, let's use the example above.

  1. Create a new text file with the name routines_template.openbb and copy and paste the routine above.

  2. Move the file inside the routines folder within the OpenBBUserData folder and, optionally, adjust the name to your liking.

  3. Open up the CLI, and type exe --file routines_template. If you changed the name of the file, then replace, routines_template, with that. As long as the file remains in the ~/OpenBBUserData/routines folder, the CLI's auto-completer will provide it as a choice.

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