Encoding

Once all fields are set, calling encode() will return a byte buffer containing the correctly formatted FIX message, with fields in the required order, and automatically added and set values for the BodyLength (9) and Checksum (10) fields.

byte_buffer = message.encode()

Raw Mode

Note that if you want to manually control the ordering of all fields, or the value of the BodyLength (9) or Checksum (10) fields, there’s a ‘raw’ flag to the encode() method that disables the default automatic functionality.

byte_buffer = message.encode(True)

This is primarily useful for creating known-bad messages for testing purposes.