bounty for online banking idea for GnuCash

[Dave (DavesTechShop.net)]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> Martin,
>
> Martin Preuss <aquamaniac at gmx.de> writes:
>
> > So are you asking for a way to get your information from wasebe to
> GnuCash or
> > do you want GnuCash to mimic the firefox addon for the purpose of
> gathering
> > and then uploading your information to wesabe?
>
> My reading of the email was that he was asking for GnuCash to mimic the
> firefox addon for the purpose of gathering your information...  And then
> loading it into GnuCash.  (Uploading it to wesabe was an additional
> feature request that I feel we can and should ignore).
>
> I think the idea of automated web downloads is pretty neat.  This would
> be important in cases where we couldn't perform direct-connect.  It's
> much closer to "Web Connect", but I think it could be used not only for
> OFX but also for QIF or other "download-then-import" formats/mechanisms.
>
> > Regards
> > Martin
>
> -derek
> --
>
>
Thanks for the interest. My goal all along has been to get *all* my
financial data into GnuCash easily. That's all.

I was suggesting that a Firefox macro be used (in the Firefox browser, not
as part of GnuCash) to extend to GnuCash the same benefits that such an
approach extends to wesabe. For example, the ease with which a user can add
their own bank. Users are empowered to support themselves (add their own
banks) with this approach, which is unique among all the online banking
packages (AFAIK).

Several things intrigue me about using macro recording features in Firefox
to accomplish this goals:
1. the macros exist only on my local computer, increasing security.
2. the macros should, in theory, be able to do anything I can do. So this
overcomes all the issues with banks not being supported. Any user can simply
add his or her own bank by recording a macro.
3. I can even automate the downloading of electronic statements too.
4. the macros should be able to get all my banking data downloaded to my
local computer. From there, importing it into GnuCash would ideally be
handled programmatically (automagically), but I could even do that manually
at first.

wesabe has the "macro" code for doing a lot of this and it is licensed under
GPL 2. Is adapting that code to work with GnuCash (while still running in
Firefox) something that someone is interested in doing?