Hi, Quant1729:
I agree with your assessment that our debugging and diagnostic tools for software developers using our APIs is currently poor. I’m afraid it’s one of the costs of being a small company with limited resources and larger ambitions: a lot of worthy projects, not enough man-hours to go around.
In any case, I think you’ll be glad to learn that we’re currently working on a version 2.0 of our APIs – a much better documented, much more modern set of interfaces to our various API services. Unfortunately, we started this effort recently, so I am unable to promise any sort of timeframe for completing it.
In the meantime, my advice is to just muddle through as best you can. (Sorry – not very useful advice, but the truth.) We don’t have any ways to simulate errors to most API calls at this time (however this will be available for the version 2.0 of the API).
We don’t allocate any full-time technical support to any API project by third-party software developers, but we’ll try to be as responsive as we can through normal Help Desk channels (help@collective2.com).
You mentioned wanting a test system to run end-to-end integration tests. The most I can suggest is that you set up a trading system on Collective2 and designate it a test system. This allows you to send as many signals as you like, and to reset the system back to zero as often as you like. (Yes, we do ask you to pay a Listing Fee for this system, but I don’t think the $120 price is out of reach for most software developers.)
I don’t have any plans to change options symbology at this time, but it’s a reasonable suggestion, and I’ll see if it’s possible to implement it in the newer versions of the APIs.
Matthew
