{talib}: A Technical Analysis and Candlestick Pattern Library in R

{talib} is an R-package for Technical Analysis and algorithmic Candlestick pattern recognition built on the C library TA-Lib. {talib} extends {TTR} by adding Candlestick pattern recognition to the pool of available indicators, and interactive charts via {plotly}.

TA-Lib supports 200+ indicators for Technical Analysis and Candlestick Patterns, all of which are available in {talib}.

Types of Indicators and Interface

In the core C library functions are named as TA_INDICATOR() and TA_CDLPATTERN() for indicators and patterns respectively. In the Python-wrapper the functions are named INDICATOR() and CDLPATTERN()—but this R package follows the tidyverse styleguide and therefore the naming is inconsistent with the core library and the Python wrapper. See below for an example of the mapping:

Function Group	TA-Lib (core)	{talib}
Overlap Studies	TA_BBANDS()	bollinger_bands()
Momentum Indicators	TA_CCI()	commodity_channel_index()
Volume Indicators	TA_OBV()	on_balance_volume()
Volatility Indicators	TA_ATR()	average_true_range()
Price Transform	TA_AVGPRICE()	average_price()
Cycle Indicators	TA_HT_SINE()	ht_sine_wave()
Pattern Recognition	TA_CDLHANGINGMAN()	hanging_man()

However, each function in {talib} is aliased so its consistent with the remaining ecosystem. See below:

all.equal(
    target = talib::bollinger_bands(talib::BTC),
    current = talib::BBANDS(talib::BTC)
)
#> [1] TRUE

The aliases are exported but are not a part of the documentation, but they behave exactly the same as the main functions as demonstrated above.

Basic Usage

Below are an example on how to use {talib} to calculate an indicator, identify a candlestick pattern and charting it all together.

Indicators

## identify Harami 
## patterns
tail(
    talib::harami(
        talib::BTC
    )
)
#>                     CDLHARAMI
#> 2024-12-26 01:00:00         0
#> 2024-12-27 01:00:00         0
#> 2024-12-28 01:00:00         0
#> 2024-12-29 01:00:00         0
#> 2024-12-30 01:00:00         0
#> 2024-12-31 01:00:00         0

## calculate bollinger
## bands
tail(
    talib::bollinger_bands(
        talib::BTC
    )
)
#>                         upper   middle    lower
#> 2024-12-26 01:00:00 104478.35 98217.88 91957.42
#> 2024-12-27 01:00:00 100877.73 97020.16 93162.59
#> 2024-12-28 01:00:00  99886.22 96516.01 93145.81
#> 2024-12-29 01:00:00  99871.12 96134.41 92397.71
#> 2024-12-30 01:00:00  99713.92 95620.42 91526.92
#> 2024-12-31 01:00:00  99373.89 95236.42 91098.95

Charting

Below is an example on how to use chart() and indicator().

{
    ## construct the chart
    ## with the default values
    ## (candlesticks by default)
    talib::chart(talib::BTC)

    ## chart the bollinger bands
    talib::indicator(
        talib::bollinger_bands
    )

    ## identify 'Harami'-patterns
    ## from the last 66 candles and
    ## chart 
    talib::indicator(
        talib::harami,
        data = talib::BTC,
        subset = 1:nrow(talib::BTC) %in% 300:nrow(talib::BTC)
    )
}

Installation

TA-Lib is vendored in {talib} via CMake, so it is not necessary to have TA-Lib pre-installed.¹

Stable version

pak::pak("talib")

Development version

The development version can be installed by recursive cloning the repository and using the available build tools as follows:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/serkor1/ta-lib-R.git
cd ta-lib-R
make build

Use make to see package-level build-tools.

Code of Conduct

Please note that {talib} is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.

Footnotes

1. Some systems (Windows in particular) may require you to explicitly install and link CMake for {talib} to build properly. ↩