Naming Bloomberg Overrides in Rblpapi Futures Chain Requests

Summary

The document addresses an Rblpapi error that occurs when requesting a Bloomberg futures chain with a date override. The reported call supplies an override as a value string, and the package rejects it because the override is not named.

The proposed fix is to pass the override as a named value, pairing the override field with its date, then supply that named vector to the request. This is a narrow data-access troubleshooting example rather than a discussion of futures-chain analysis or trading strategy. It demonstrates the required structure for this particular override and error, but gives no additional guidance on Bloomberg entitlements, date formats, or other request fields.

Key ideas

• Rblpapi expects request overrides to include field names.
• The futures-chain date override should pair the override name with its value.
• Passing a named override resolves the specific error described in the document.
• The example covers request syntax and does not evaluate futures data or trading performance.

Tags

# bds with field in R returning error


# bds with field in R returning error












I am using Rblpapi and trying to query the following:

```
bds("FN1 Comdty","FUT_CHAIN", overrides = "CHAIN_DATE=20170101")
```

However, I am getting the following error:

```
 Error in bds_Impl(con, security, field, options, overrides, verbose, identity) : 
 Request overrides must be named.
```

## Answer by rrrr (score 1)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/42448

Overrides must have their value separately defined, try:

```
ovrd = c("CHAIN_DATE" = "20170101")
bds("FN1 Comdty","FUT_CHAIN", overrides = ovrd)
```

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.