Data connectors

Every module that reads market data draws from one shared list of connectors. A provider account is created once and granted to the modules that may use it.

Manage them in Settings → Data connectors, on the standalone /connectors page, or from the connector button any data module puts next to its provider picker. All three render the same screen.

What a connector is

A connector is a named instance of a provider, not the provider itself. Four things belong to it:

• the provider: Binance, Yahoo Finance, EODHD…;
• its credentials: typed in, or plugged from the Vault. Write-only: the app only ever knows which secret names are set;
• an optional request limit: a maximum number of calls per period;
• the modules allowed to use it: one or more, or all modules (a wildcard that also covers data modules added in future versions).

Several connectors of the same provider can coexist. That is the point: a read-only key for charting and a separate key for bulk downloads, each with its own limit, each granted to a different module.

Providers

Provider	Credentials	Asset types	Symbol search	Live stream
Binance	none	crypto	yes	yes
Kraken	none	crypto	yes	yes
Coinbase	none	crypto	yes	yes
Yahoo Finance	none	equity, ETF, index, crypto	yes	no
Alpha Vantage	api_key	equity, ETF, crypto, FX	yes	no
EODHD	api_key	equity, ETF, FX, crypto	yes	no
Alpaca	api_key, api_secret	equity, crypto, option	yes	intraday
Massive (Polygon.io)	api_key	equity, ETF, option, future, crypto, FX, index	yes	intraday, paid plan
Interactive Brokers	none (host + port)	equity, ETF, crypto, FX, index, future, option	yes	intraday

The keyless ones work the moment you create the connector. Each provider row links to its own API documentation and carries a note on its rate limits, and a connector that streams also carries a note on what live costs there.

Live streaming

Live reach is narrower than download reach, and deliberately so.

• The three crypto exchanges publish a candle channel per interval, so every timeframe they download they also stream, daily included: on a 24/7 market the daily candle is the epoch day.
• Alpaca, Massive and Interactive Brokers publish one grain each (one-minute bars, one-minute aggregates and five-second bars respectively) and the chart's timeframe is folded from it. That makes every intraday timeframe available and leaves daily and weekly to the download: an equity session is not 1440 epoch-aligned minutes, so a daily candle built that way would disagree with the one the download stores. The chart says so rather than hiding the control.
• Live is often sold separately from history. A free Massive key downloads history and is refused at the live login; Alpaca's free key streams IEX and the indicative options feed but not SIP or OPRA; Interactive Brokers serves what your account subscribes to. When a feed cannot run, the chart names which of those it is and stops, rather than reconnecting behind a dot that never turns green.
• Most of these vendors allow one live connection per account, so a second program on the same key takes the seat. That case is reported as such and keeps retrying, since it clears when you close the other one.

Alpaca carries one setting for this: Market data feed, iex (free plan, the default) or sip (paid). It selects the live socket only; downloads are unaffected.

When a provider holds several connectors, the chart's live control grows an account picker: two keys are two entitlements and two connection seats, so which one is spent is your choice, not a fallback.

Interactive Brokers

The odd one out: there is no vendor URL and no API key. You run IB Gateway or TWS on your own machine and the connector speaks its socket protocol, so what it carries is an address, not a credential: a host and a port, stored in the clear so a failed connection can be diagnosed. The data is whatever your IB account is subscribed to.

• Settings: Gateway host (host.docker.internal for a gateway on the same machine, since OpenTraderWorld runs in a container) and API port (4001 live / 4002 paper for the Gateway, 7496 / 7497 for TWS).
• In the gateway: Global Configuration → API → Settings, tick Enable ActiveX and Socket Clients, and check the port matches. On Docker Desktop the call arrives from the host loopback, so Allow connections from localhost only already covers it; on Docker Engine untick it and add 172.28.53.10 to Trusted IPs, which takes single addresses and not a range.
• Test connection reports what answered, and names the setting to change when nothing does.
• Tickers: AAPL, SAN:EUR or 7203@TSEJ:JPY for shares, EURUSD for a cash pair, an OCC symbol for an option. A future is written with its month, ES.202512, or with the local symbol TWS shows, MNQU6. Futures are looked up against the gateway before anything is downloaded, so the exchange is optional: when the ticker names more than one listing, the error lists them and you pick.
• The client id is chosen by the app in a high private band, never asked for, so nothing else you have connected to the gateway is kicked off.
• Interactive Brokers allows 60 historical requests per rolling 10 minutes per account: the connector paces itself, so a long backfill is slow by design.

Tested against IB Gateway build 10.50.1e (25 Aug 2026). Older builds are expected to work, the socket protocol being negotiated down, but that one is the version this connector was verified on.

Create one

1. Add connector, pick the provider, and name it: the name is what module pickers show, so Binance charts beats Binance 2.
2. Fill the credentials the provider requires, or pick them from the Vault. Keyless providers skip this.
3. Choose the modules it serves. Opened from a module, the new connector is granted to that module only; opened from Settings or /connectors, it is granted to everything.
4. Optionally set a request limit (see below).

A connector missing a required credential is shown as needs credentials and is skipped by every module until you set it.

Module grants

The grant list is server-side: a module asking for a connector it was never given is refused, so a checkbox that only lived in the browser would have been decoration. Ticking every data module collapses back to the all modules wildcard, which keeps future data modules covered.

The grantable modules today:

Module	What it reads
Historical Data	the download form's provider list, and the symbol lookup
Visualization	the chart's symbol search, its on-demand windows and its live stream
Watchlists	the quote source of a list, or of a single symbol
Journal	the candles behind the Market data and Open risk tabs

Request limits

A limit is a count of outbound calls per day, hour or minute, tracked per connector.

• Everywhere else in the app it is observe-only: it feeds the counters in Settings → API rate and warns you, but nothing is throttled.
• On the chart's on-demand fetches (/api/histviz/series) it blocks: once the connector is at its limit the window comes back with the bars already stored and a request limit reached notice, instead of quietly burning through a metered plan.

Leave the limit off if you'd rather let the provider be the one that says no.

Where connectors are used

• Historical Data: the download form's provider list, and the symbol lookup.
• Visualization: the Data tab searches every connector granted to the chart at once; the live stream runs on the connector you pick in the live control, or on the oldest one the chart is granted for that provider.
• Watchlists: the quote source of a list, or of a single symbol. CoinGecko and Yahoo remain available with no connector at all.
• Trading Journal: the candles behind the Market data and Open risk tabs, with a source pickable per asset type.

Upgrading from the old per-module settings

Historical Data's Settings tab and Watchlists' Sources tab no longer exist: they were two disconnected copies of this screen over two disconnected lists. Accounts created in either one are now connectors here, each still granted to the module it came from, so nothing changes reach on upgrade. Names are globally unique again: a name that existed in both lists is kept once and the other renamed <name> #2.