How to Automate Your Trading: Charts → Bridge → Broker

Steps

1. Understand the stack. TradingView holds your strategy and fires the alert, but it can't place a trade. So when your condition is met it POSTs a webhook — a small chunk of text — to PineConnector, which relays it to an Expert Advisor (EA) running inside MetaTrader 5. The EA places the actual order with your broker. Signal, bridge, execution.
2. Build and test the strategy on TradingView. Write your entry and exit rules in Pine Script, or use an indicator you trust, and run the visual backtester. Stay skeptical of what it shows you. A perfect-looking curve usually means overfitting, and the built-in backtester ignores realistic slippage and fees.
3. Set up MetaTrader 5 on an always-on machine. Install MT5 with your broker, add the PineConnector EA to a chart, and enter your licence ID. The terminal must be running whenever an alert can fire, so host it on a VPS or a machine that stays on 24/5. A laptop that goes to sleep will silently miss trades.
4. Create the TradingView alert with a webhook. Add an alert on your strategy, set the condition, and under 'Notifications' enable 'Webhook URL', pointed at PineConnector's endpoint. The alert 'Message' field carries the command PineConnector reads; that one line does all the work (see the code below).
5. Format the PineConnector command. The message is one comma-separated instruction: licence ID, action, symbol, then risk parameters such as stop-loss and lot or risk size. Spell the symbol exactly as your broker lists it — EURUSD and EURUSD.r are different instruments to MT5, and the wrong one gets the order rejected.
6. Demo-test the full chain first. Point everything at a demo account and leave it running for weeks. Confirm alerts arrive, orders fire, and stops and sizing behave exactly as intended. Move to a small live account only once the whole chain has become boring.

The code

Copy these verbatim and swap in your own values — licence ID, symbol, risk and stop settings. Double-check the symbol name matches your broker exactly, or the order will be rejected.

// Paste this as the TradingView alert "Message".
// Format: LICENSE_ID,ACTION,SYMBOL,params

1234567890,buy,EURUSD,risk=1,sl=25,tp=50

// 1234567890 -> your PineConnector licence ID
// buy         -> action (buy | sell | closelong | closeshort | close)
// EURUSD      -> broker symbol, spelled EXACTLY as your broker lists it
// risk=1      -> risk 1% of balance on this trade
// sl=25       -> stop-loss in pips (non-negotiable: always set one)
// tp=50       -> take-profit in pips

//@version=5
strategy("Demo — EMA cross", overlay=true)

fast = ta.ema(close, 20)
slow = ta.ema(close, 50)

longSignal  = ta.crossover(fast, slow)
shortSignal = ta.crossunder(fast, slow)

// Build the PineConnector message from live values so one alert covers every bar.
license = "1234567890"
if longSignal
    alert(license + ",buy,EURUSD,risk=1,sl=25,tp=50", alert.freq_once_per_bar_close)
if shortSignal
    alert(license + ",sell,EURUSD,risk=1,sl=25,tp=50", alert.freq_once_per_bar_close)

plot(fast, color=color.teal)
plot(slow, color=color.orange)

# In the TradingView alert dialog, Notifications tab:
#   [x] Webhook URL
#   URL: https://pineconnector.com/webhook   (use PineConnector's current endpoint)
#
# TradingView POSTs the alert Message to that URL when the condition triggers.
# Verify the current endpoint in PineConnector's docs before going live.