example

Examples

Runnable programs that demonstrate each major feature area of alpaca-cpp.

All examples use paper trading / sandbox endpoints by default — no real money is affected.

List of examples

Example	Description
simple_example	Account info, market clock, positions, assets
trading_example	Order management: create, modify, cancel
watchlist_example	Watchlist CRUD
crypto_example	Crypto wallets, transfers, whitelisted addresses
websocket_example	Real-time trade/quote streaming via WebSocket
stock_data_example	Historical and latest stock market data
option_data_example	Option bars, trades, quotes, snapshots, chain
crypto_data_example	Crypto bars, trades, quotes, orderbooks
news_screener_example	News articles and stock screener endpoints
broker_sse_example	Broker event streaming over SSE
broker_get_accounts_example	Broker account listing (legacy + client-credentials auth)

Building

From the repository root:

cmake -S . -B build -DALPACA_BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON
cmake --build build

Credentials

Set the environment variables required by the example you want to run:

# Trading / Market Data
export ALPACA_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export ALPACA_SECRET_KEY="your-secret-key"

# Broker — legacy auth
export ALPACA_BROKER_API_KEY="your-broker-key"
export ALPACA_BROKER_API_SECRET="your-broker-secret"

# Broker — client credentials auth (recommended)
export ALPACA_BROKER_CLIENT_ID="your-client-id"
export ALPACA_BROKER_CLIENT_SECRET="your-client-secret"

Or copy .env.example to .env, fill in your keys, and source .env.

Running

./build/example/simple_example
./build/example/trading_example
./build/example/websocket_example
./build/example/broker_sse_example
# ... etc.

Getting API keys

• Paper Trading: https://app.alpaca.markets/paper/dashboard/overview
• Live Trading: https://app.alpaca.markets/brokerage/dashboard/overview

Navigate to the API Keys section to generate new keys.

Troubleshooting

401 Unauthorized — verify you are using the correct endpoint (paper/live/sandbox) for your credentials and that env vars are exported in the current shell.

Library not found — make sure you built from the repository root with -DALPACA_BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON so the library target is available.