cmd line: import of transactions and invoice data

[John Ralls]

On Dec 31, 2013, at 11:50 AM, Jannick <jannick.news at gmail.com> wrote:

> Derek Atkins <derek <at> ihtfp.com> writes:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> On Tue, December 31, 2013 11:36 am, Emmanuel Florent wrote:
>>>> Coming from another (back-)end: Do you know if someone has gone down the
>>>> implementation route to import data into the MySQL db?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Is that right that Gnucash empty all the tables in db then rewrite them so
>>> the db bridge is not possible in your case  ?
>> 
>> As John already answered, no, GnuCash doesn't empty and rewrite your
>> tables for you (except in certain limited cases, like File -> Save As).
> 
> This implies that GnuCash fires up some updating commands when it comes to
> updating are creating transactions - or am I missing something here? This
> might be why GnuCash runs a lot faster when connected to the mySQL server
> (in contrast to having loaded the db from the hard drive) I guess. 

It updates the database after any change to the in-memory data. At least we
think it does, but we don’t yet have complete test coverage to be sure that
we haven’t missed something in our audits.

> 
>> However, GnuCash DOES NOT support you writing to the database behind it. 
>> To write the DB you *MUST* use the GnuCash API (in C, Scheme, or Python).
> 
> This *is* a very good point. For the benefit of my better understanding:
> Given my first guess above is correct, then how does GC work when it comes
> to manually input data or insert it via the AqBanking interface (HBCI)? What
> does it do when information are handed in?

It parses the incoming stream and converts it to internal data structures, prompting
the user via a dialog box to assign the accounts for each side of the transactions,
then runs data-integrity routines on each transaction to ensure that the transaction
balances, creating an imbalance-account-split if it doesn’t. If you’re using the SQL
backend it updates the various affected tables immediately, otherwise it sets the
book dirty flag.

Regards,
John Ralls