Import prices API

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Am Samstag, 7. April 2007 15:35 schrieben Sie:
> GnuCash calls the gnc-fq-helper application to get quotes. 

Do I only need to deal with gnc-fq-helper? There are other programs gnc-fq-*. 
I know that gnucash checks whether Finance::Quote is installed. Well it isn't 
and it won't be (see below).

It would help to know, from where gnu-fq-helper is called.

> You could
> replace that program with any other program you want to return quotes
> back to Gnucash.  Run the program by hand if you want to see the
> format of the returned data.
>

Since Finance::Quote isn't installed, I can't do this -- unfortunately. Even 
if it were installed, it would be of no use (see below). To know, how it is 
called would help (see above).

> I dont know if it expects to get one quote at a time or gets all quotes
> in one run.
>
> There's also the scheme API (and I API) you could use if you wanted to
> write code to install quotes.

Could you tell me a little bit more? Are you talking about price-quotes.scm? 

>
> Also, F::Q itself has an API; it's a plugin architecture so you could plug
> in your own module.
>
> But I have to ask:   why would you want to NOT use F::Q?
>

It is of no use to me, for the following reasons:

(a) All modules do not fit. I would have to write my own one. I checked that 
thoroughly and repeatedly.

(b) I don't know perl, and I don't want to dig into it. Time is one issue.

(c) I already wrote my own module a couple of years ago. It was enough then to 
copy an existing module and change it a little bit. It only took one or two 
days.

(d) Now I would have to write another module. This time it is much more 
complicated and I estimate that I would have to spend a lot of time to learn 
enough of perl to do it. -- Too much time. 

(e) These modules have to be maintained once in a while. It would be even more 
inefficient for me to always relearn perl just for that matter.

Well, I could write a module to read quotes from a file and write my own 
program to get those quotes beforehand and write them to a file to be picked 
up by the module. But I don't like this approach. I would have to install not 
only Finance::Quote but also the modules it needs just to be able to read 
quotes from a file. The whole stuff would just need to be present....

It will be much more elegant to directly plug in my own program. And if the 
gnucash community would define and freeze an interface, I guess it would help 
other people as well. But don't get me wrong: you don't need to do this just 
for me.

Thanks for any help.

- AS