Projects

Getting Started

Introduction

Projects contain files to run backtests, launch research notebooks, perform parameter optimizations, and deploy live trading strategies. You need to create projects in order to create strategies and share your work with other members. Projects enable you to generate institutional-grade reports on the performance of your backtests. You can create your projects from scratch or you can utilize pre-built libraries and third-party packages to expedite your development process.

View All Projects

To view all your projects, open the organization workspace directory on your local machine.

Create Projects

Follow these steps to create a project on Local Platform:

  1. Log in to Local Platform.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the VS Code QuantConnect icon QuantConnect icon.
  3. If a project is already open, close it.
  4. In the Open Project panel, click Create Project.
  5. Open a new project
  6. Enter the project name and then press Enter.
  7. Name a new project

The new project directory is added to your organization workspace directory and the project opens.

Open Projects

Follow these steps to open a project on Local Platform:

  1. Log in to Local Platform.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the VS Code QuantConnect icon QuantConnect icon.
  3. If a project is already open, close it.
  4. In the Project panel, click Open Project.
  5. Open a new project
  6. In the Open QuantConnect Project window, click a project in your organization workspace and then click Select.
  7. Open an existing project
  8. If an I Trust the Authors button appears, click it.

Close Projects

Follow these steps to close a project:

  1. In the left navigation menu, click the VS Code QuantConnect icon QuantConnect icon.
  2. In the Project panel, click Close.
  3. Close project

Clone Projects

Clone a project to create a new copy of the project and save it within the same organization. When you clone a project, the project files are duplicated but the backtest results and live deployment history are not retained. Cloning enables you to test small changes in your projects before merging the changes back into the original project and start a new live deployment record.

Follow these steps to clone a project:

  1. Open the project.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the VS Code QuantConnect icon QuantConnect icon.
  3. In the Project panel, click Clone.
  4. Clone a local project

The cloned version of the project opens in a new VS Code window.

Rename Projects

Follow these steps to rename a project:

  1. Open the project.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the QuantConnect icon.
  3. In the Project panel, hover over the project name and then click the pencil icon that appears.
  4. Rename a project
  5. In the Name field, enter the new project name and then click Save Changes.

The project name must only contain -, _, letters, numbers, and spaces. The project name can't start with a space or be any of the following reserved names: CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, or LPT9.

Create Project Directories

Set the name of a project to directoryName / projectName to create a project directory.

Set Descriptions

You can give a project a description to provide a high-level overview of the project and its functionality. Descriptions make it easier to return to old projects and understand what is going on at a high level without having to look at the code. The project description is also displayed at the top of backtest reports, which you can create after your backtest completes.

Follow these steps to set the project description:

  1. Open the project.
  2. In the Project panel, hover over the project name and then click the pencil icon that appears.
  3. Rename a project
  4. In the Description field, enter the new project description and then click Save Changes.

Edit Parameters

Algorithm parameters are hard-coded values for variables in your project that are set outside of the code files. Add parameters to your projects to remove hard-coded values from your code files and to perform parameter optimizations. You can add parameters, set default parameter values, and remove parameters from your projects.

Add Parameters

Follow these steps to add an algorithm parameter to a project:

  1. Open the project.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the QuantConnect icon.
  3. In the Project panel, click Add New Parameter.
  4. Enter the parameter name.
  5. The parameter name must be unique in the project.

  6. Enter the default value.
  7. Click Create Parameter.

To get the parameter values into your algorithm, see Get Parameters.

Set Default Parameter Values

Follow these steps to set the default value of an algorithm parameter in a project:

  1. Open the project.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the QuantConnect icon.
  3. In the Project panel, hover over the algorithm parameter and then click the pencil icon that appears.
  4. Edit default parameter
  5. Enter a default value for the parameter and then click Save.
  6. The Project panel displays the default parameter value next to the parameter name.

Delete Parameters

Follow these steps to delete an algorithm parameter in a project:

  1. Open the project.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the QuantConnect icon.
  3. In the Project panel, hover over the algorithm parameter and then click the trash can icon that appears.
  4. Delete a parameter
  5. Remove the GetParameter calls that were associated with the parameter from your code files.

Delete Projects

Follow these steps to delete a project:

  1. Open the project.
  2. In the left navigation menu, click the VS Code QuantConnect icon QuantConnect icon.
  3. In the Project panel, click Delete.
  4. Delete a local project

Encrypt Projects

When you save projects in QuantConnect Cloud, you can save encrypted versions of your project files instead of the raw, human readable, file content. Encrypting your projects gives you an additional layer of protection. To use the encryption system, you provide your own encryption key, which your local browser saves to memory. For more information about project encryption, see Encryption.

Get Project Id

To get the project Id, open the <organizationWorkspace> / <projectName> / config.json file and look for the value of the local-id or cloud-id key. An example project Id is 13946911.

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