CSV Importer

[Josh Sled]

"Benjamin Sperisen" <lasindi at gmail.com> writes:
> Anyway, most of what I've done has been to address the shortcomings
> discussed earlier.

Benjamin, congrats on a pretty successful Summer of Code project.  The
importer is looking (and working) pretty well.


> First, I've reworked the internal error handling code so that, if
> there are errors, a new column to the right is created listing the
> errors on each particular row. For example, if a row has "abc" in its
> "Deposit" column, it will put "Deposit column could not be understood"
> in the "Errors" column for that row.

I noticed that in my test file, the only regular line in error was a heading
line.  It'd be nice to have an option of the form "ignore file's header
line".  (Even better, it'd be good to do default column-type assignments
based on the contents of that header line. ;)

Secondarily, it'd be nice – in the error handling page – to be able to
"ignore" a line in error, easily.


It'd be nice to support both the transaction and post date in the importer,
since the engine/model does support both, even if the register UI doesn't,
right now.

Also, I notice the first stage after the file parsing – perhaps part of the
Generic Importer, though – is an account tree/selection dialog labeled:

    "Please select or create an apropriate GnuCash account for: "

... obviously, it'd be nice if the thought was finished about what account
I'm supposed to be selecting for.


> Second, fixed-width files are now supported. The interface is actually
> virtually identical to Gnumeric's, as I merged their code into mine,
> particularly for the context menu for column merging.

I couldn't figure this out at all... I couldn't see how to mark the
boundaries of columns for a fixed-width file.

As well, the lines in my fixed-width file were pretty long, which made the
dialog open way too wide... 1.5 screens wide, in fact. :(


Were there some test data files that you were using?  Are those checked in
anywhere?  I'll see if I can add mine, after I clean them up, as well.


> During the fall, I would like to keep working on the importer, even
> though I won't be able to work quite as much because of school. The
> next feature I'd like to implement is actual editing within the dialog
> of data (so that users don't have to go back and manually edit it in a
> spreadsheet, save and reimport).

Nifty.  I hope you're able to find the time to continue to work on this...


> I would also like to thank you, Josh and Christian, as well as the
> rest of the GnuCash community, for all of your help and guidance over
> the summer! This was definitely a great learning experience in many
> practical aspects of open source and software development in general.
> I have really enjoyed working with all of you and hope to continue in
> the future.

I'm glad you found it worthwhile.  Thank you for sticking with it, and
getting a nice new feature added to GnuCash! :)

-- 
...jsled
http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo ${a}@${b}
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