Online banking

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Wed Sep 30 11:04:22 EDT 2015


Paul,

Paul Tirk <paultirk at paultirk.com> writes:

> Dear Christian,
>
> I understand your point, but I am not actually trying to scrape a
> webpage but rather using an existing API of the bank to return the
> transactions in JSON format.
>
> In a perfect world, there would be a global standard for everyone but
> unfortunately in Europe banks and financial institutions seem not to
> be interested to provide such a interface for the end user (except
> HBCI in Germany, in Austria the discussion about this is already going
> on for at least 10 years and it seems impossible to get closer to a
> solution). Instead I have the impression that they are trying to
> abandon all efforts on this and force the user/client to use their
> proprietary programs/interfaces.
>
> But as John pointed out, I will have a look at the import-export
> source and create a plugin for that, maybe it can be useful to others
> later.

I would recommend you either consider another AqB JSON plugin, or a
generic GnuCash JSON plugin.  I'm not sure which approach would be
easier to implement.  AqB does already have a bunch of code for account
management and network I/O, as well as the complete(ish) integration
into the GnuCash UI.  So, it might be easier to plug in there, where all
you really have to do is the data layer.

> Thank you all for your suggestions.
>
> Paul

-derek

> Am 28.09.2015 08:40, schrieb Christian Stimming:
>> Dear Paul,
>>
>> I don't think it is possible or useful to think of "yet another
>> generic API".
>> Instead, I would suggest the API of aqbanking is indeed the 4th or 5th
>> iteration on building an API from the application to online banking
>> functions.
>> Also, I would strongly suggest against programming a website scraper
>> - 
>> it will
>> give you very little gain for very large effort. If your bank
>> doesn't have
>> anything else besides a website, in fact the easiest solution is to
>> find a
>> different bank that has some standard protocol such as OFX. Sorry
>> for that.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Christian
>>
>> Am Montag, 28. September 2015, 00:24:02 schrieb Paul Tirk:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> no, I know that it's not a website scraper but in fact I want to
>>> program
>>> one ;) And I assume the developer of AqBanking will not just add
>>> any set
>>> of api-calls/https-requests for every other bank to his library.
>>>
>>> So I was thinking about a generic interface in Gnucash to simplify
>>> things because I also think it would be beneficial for future
>>> development to not depend completely and only on AqBanking like it is
>>> now because it seems that (at least in Europe) the trend is going away
>>> from standards (except HBCI in Germany) towards bank-specific APIs
>>> (most
>>> of them are https-requests sent).
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>> Am 27.09.2015 20:55, schrieb Derek Atkins:
>>> > Hi,
>>> >
>>> > Yes, the GnuCash AqB backend is tied to AqB.  However...
>>> >
>>> > AqBanking is licensed under the GPL, and already has multiple modules
>>> > that
>>> > implement HBCI, OFX, OFX-DC, MT940, CSV, ...
>>> >
>>> > So, why do you feel that you couldn't add a new module to that?
>>> >
>>> > Do you know what online banking protocol your bank supports?  Or do you
>>> > have the mistaken impression that it's a website scraper?
>>> >
>>> > -derek
>>> >
>>> > On Sun, September 27, 2015 2:23 pm, Paul Tirk wrote:
>>> >> Hello!
>>> >>
>>> >> I was thinking about adding online banking support for a bank which
>>> >> has
>>> >> no HBCI (and is not supported by AqBanking). After some time browsing
>>> >> the source of gnucash and AqBanking I realized that the online banking
>>> >> functionality of gnucash is tightly coupled to AqBanking which in turn
>>> >> has a restricted license and it actually doesn't look easy to add
>>> >> different banks.
>>> >>
>>> >> Are there plans on a clean online banking API in gnucash which could
>>> >> enable developers to include different banking protocols? If not I
>>> >> would
>>> >> be interested in contributing but I have no idea where to start. Could
>>> >> somebody maybe give me a hint about this?
>>> >>
>>> >> My idea would be: the current menu entries for online banking are
>>> >> fine,
>>> >> it would just need a general user/account setup which could allow the
>>> >> current AqBanking accounts as well as other "plugins/modules" which
>>> >> can
>>> >> then be triggered as it is working right now with only AqBanking.
>>> >>
>>> >> I hope I made myself clear and thanks in advance,
>>> >>
>>> >> Paul
>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>> >> gnucash-devel mailing list
>>> >> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>>> >> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> gnucash-devel mailing list
>>> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available


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