questions about plugging a palm conduit into Gnucash

[Neil Williams]

On Wednesday 08 December 2004 11:28 am, Philip Lowman wrote:
> Over the last several months I've become something of a devoted Gnucash
> user so much so that I'm tracking cash expenditures including Sales Tax
> these days[!].
>
> Anyways, I am getting sick of asking for a receipt for every cash
> purchase I make and I'd like to write a palm application which allows me
> to enter new transactions into an Account which are then synchronized
> with Gnucash when I Hotsync.

Already underway. The pilot-link project will include direct connectivity to 
GnuCash and other compatible applications.

The first part of the job was to be able to merge GnuCash books and this code 
is working - with a proviso that there is a lot of work still to do, 
including fixing a design flaw that Derek spotted just a few days ago. I'm 
currently in the middle of fixing another part of the API and I need to get 
that working before I can implement the design fix.

I could do with some help if you are interested.

> I'm fairly certain I can write the Palm 
> app to facilitate this however I'm not too certain about the glue
> between Gnucash and the Palm databases.

The 'glue' is QOF and work is well underway to make pilot-link compatible with 
QOF. From there, every Palm database can be queried and data exchanged with 
GnuCash. There won't be a need for a separate conduit - every Palm database 
will be accessible, to all kinds of applications.

http://code.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/palm.html

I'm part of the pilot-link development too, so I've got them enthused about 
QOF and willing to build QOF as a framework around pilot-link.

> I have investigated OFX and rejected the idea of constructing OFX from
> the handheld data because it doesn't handle splits (which I would like
> to support in the application).

That's why a new file format has been devised for QOF - QSF.

http://code.neil.williamsleesmill.me.uk/qsf.html

> I am just wondering if Gnucash has any 
> kind of consistent plugin interface which will never change?

It has modules, but not a plugin interface per-se. QSF will import directly 
into GnuCash using GnuCash objects. Should be ready early next year. ish.

Essentially, pilot-link will create XML files suitable for GnuCash to read in 
as it's own and intelligently merge the new data into existing GnuCash books.

> I am 
> considering interfacing with the core gnucash libraries by writing my
> own code which calls the Gnucash libraries to add transactions

Contact me off-list - urgently. Please don't duplicate all this, I have 
exactly the same goals.

> and so 
> forth since it seems the easiest way to do this.  I guess I'm just
> worried about having to make changes and recompile my app when things
> are changed in Gnucash itself between releases.

This has already been addressed. The code is generic and doesn't need to be 
recompiled - it can cope with new objects as they are defined in GnuCash, or 
any QOF application.

> Also some pointers would be helpful.  Essentially I want my conduit to
> open a gnucash file and simply add transactions and splits to it and
> close the file.  Are there any problems or pitfalls that anyone can
> think of in doing this?

I've spent a year plumbing the pitfalls and it's taken a lot of help from 
Derek and Linas, amongst others, to get it even to this stage.

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/

http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/attachments/20041208/78320514/attachment.bin