Difference between revisions of "User:Fleminra"

Revision as of 18:56, 23 February 2006

Robert Fleming.

Not a GnuCash developer.

flеmіng⊚ҫѕ∙wаѕhіngtоn∙еdu (transcribe, don't copy+paste)

Personal wish list

• Get GnuCash Wiki to Interwiki with Wikipedia to facilitate links like [[Wikipedia:remote procedure call]]
• Viable database back-end. XML's strength is data exchange among heterogenous platforms, which is not really what this part of GnuCash is doing.
• A way to suck in external, repetetive data with minimum of hassle. Requires extensibility and/or non-file-based external software interface. Would like to bypass the (practically) non-deterministic Bayesian import mechanism because in this case the data is consistent and well defined.

What's wrong with deactivating the checkbox "use bayesian importer" in properties -> Online banking/Importing? Also, I've heard several requests about regexp/rule-based importers but so far nobody bothered to actually implement any of those, so that's why we still don't have anything else.

I don't want to disable the Bayesian import altogether.. it's still quite useful for dynamic data like bank statements where transactions vary from month to month. I just want to be able to write plug-in (see below) that is smart enough to dump data into specific GnuCash accounts (actually not "smart" but "dumb" because this specific plug-in would be hardcoded and inflexible.) —Fleminra 13:56, 23 February 2006 (EST)

• • Would like to do this without downloading/compiling GnuCash or dependent source code.

Huh? I don't understand this part. What do you mean here? To use gnucash you have to download and compile it. If you don't want to do that, where's the connection to gnucash? Again, that qof project http://qof.sourceforge.net might already be what you are looking for (but its maintainer has just announced he'll be out of town for a few days/weeks)

I would like to extend GnuCash (the binaries of which I get from Debian/Ubuntu) without needing to download the GnuCash source code. I should say "I would like to use GnuCash without having to compile it myself — I'll let my distributor do that." —Fleminra 13:56, 23 February 2006 (EST)

• • I'm not planning on waiting for my bank/employer's consent before making (my copy of) GnuCash suck in my bank/employer's data.
  • (weekly!) paystub data from employer, including several tax and other deductions. This can be scraped from one of the company's intranet web sites.
  • (weekly!) 401k contributions, spread across several funds. Can be scraped from netbenefits.fidelity.com.

As for these requests: Do you mean your wish is that gnucash should "retrieve paystub data from employers (web) server" and "retrieve 401k contribution statements from some other (web) server"? In that case, a necessary condition for that wish is that this data is made available by that server through an openly documented protocol, like a http download file, or a ofx direct connect access, or a HBCI online banking server (the last one only exists in Germany). If that is the case, then it's a question of whether gnucash implements that particular online banking/statement retrieval protocol. --Cstim 08:01, 23 February 2006 (EST)

I would like to do something like Finance::Quote: pull in useful data without the source's permission. After thinking about it, and re-reading my earlier comment, I guess what I want is for GnuCash to be "pluggable" in the Firefox/Thunderbird sense (where nearly all behavior can be modified/augmented) or in the XMMS sense (where plugins strictly fall into one of a few categories like input, processing, and output). For example, if this were in Python, GnuCash could do something like:

import users_custom_module

new_transactions = users_custom_module.get_new_transactions()

for transaction in transactions:

  # do something with 'transaction' to suck it into my GnuCash data

  # transaction would need to implement some specific API for GnuCash to get transaction data

Because I think my employer is likely to never support any standard for getting paystub data.. For sure this is a hack.. in fact I would ultimately prefer that suppliers of finance data encode it in RDF and not even OFX/QIF, to make it most broadly accessible. And some financial instutions may disapprove of me doing this, so I would suggest these unauthorized plugins never be distributed with GnuCash (to redirect complaints from those institutions), but be shared by users by some other means (if at all... e.g. there may be no interest in my plug-in to get my employer's data). —Fleminra 13:56, 23 February 2006 (EST)

• • utility bills: how much goes to electricy, gas, tax?
• A way to link GnuCash data to/from arbitrary other data, like my relational database that tracks all those electronics rebates, link to e-mails pertinent to a particular account/transaction/split, link to locally archived PDF receipts, link to related photographs, etc. I already link into the GnuCash file using GUIDs and XPath (for the rebate-tracking application), but parsing XML documents on the order of 10 MB is unhealthy for application responsiveness. (see Semantic Web, GNOME Storage.)