Generic importer:QIF

[warlord at MIT.EDU]

Hi¸

Quoting Chintan Agarwal <chintan.agarwal at gmail.com>:

> Thanks for that information. I could not find the declaration of Transaction
> structure(or its un-typedefed form) per say but from the functions in the
> file, could gather the variable types present.
>
> I think that for QIF importer, we could have a simpler structure, akin OFX
> importer wherein the function void gnc_file_ofx_import (void) (in
> /src/import-export/ofx/gnc-ofx-import.c)is the top-level function. In such a
> top-level function there are basically three steps:-
> 1) Creating a context for the input data(done by QIF context)
> 2) Parsing the data(done by QIF parser written in /src/import-export/qif)
> 3) Integrating the parsed data into the Gnucash accounts, actions like
> matching, mapping etc.(as pointed out earlier, this is done simply by using
> functions in import-main-matcher.h, specifically the function
> gnc_gen_trans_list_add_trans(...)).
> As for the frontend, it would be there only in step 1 as after that the
> parsing process( in the backend) starts and completes.
>
> Some questions:-
> 1) Do the above three steps miss out something vital for QIF import?

No, you also need:

1) the ability to load in multiple files
2) user input for data disambiguation (number/date formats)
3) QIF Category/Account mapping  (this isn't in the generic importer;
   it's pretty QIF specific)

Another thing to keep in mind is that the code in src/import-export/qif
was never complete, so you might to consider rewriting the parsing
functions, too, instead of using that code.  It's unclear that that
code is correct; it's certainly true that when you merge files together
it doesn't do a good job of keeping them separate enough to be able
to "unload".

> 2) The top-level function that would be made should be by what name? In
> other words, which function call results in the QIF import process being
> trigerred?

Choose something.  It really doesn't matter what you name the "start qif
import" API.

> 3) Does GNUCash use the standard GNU indentation format?

Not exactly.  We TRY to use 4-space indentation with no tabs, braces
on the following line.  No space between functions and parens, but spaces
between if/while/for and the parens.

> -Chintan

-derek