# qbt - Quantopian Backtesting Services ##Development Quickstart Navigate to your mongodb installation and start your db server: ./bin/mongodb Install the necessary python libraries: easy_install tornado pymongo Create a development database with sample data, will create one qbt user: python qbt_data_bootstrap.py --user_email=... --password=... To run the qbt against a local mongodb instance, navigate to the source dir and run python qbt_server.py --mongodb_dbname=qbt To see all the available options: python qbt_server.py --help or python qbt_data_bootstrap.py --help qbt uses tornado to accept synchronous requests for backtesting sessions. The client of a backtesting session first invokes the _backtest_ endpoint: http://serverip/backtest?startdate=<>&enddate=<>... qbt will respond with a json object describing the session: - backtest id, to be referenced in all further requests - zeromq connection information for the event stream A backtesting session is comprised of: - REST endpoint to request orders - an event stream delivered via zeromq ## Pre-requisites You need to have the tornado and pymongo eggs installed: easy_install tornado pymongo You need to have mongodb installed and running. Find your system at http://www.mongodb.org/downloads and set it up. ### Database and Collections expected in MongoDB ### QBT requires a running mongodb instance with a few collections: - user collection. See handlers.BaseHandler and handlers.LoginHandler for code using this collection. Documents must have: - email - standard email address - salt - sha256 hex of: datetime.utcnow()--password - encrypted_password - an sha256 hex digest of: salt--password - _id - standard issue mongodb primary key ## Authenticating ## Requesting a Backtest