[GNC-dev] Online ID matching for OFX import

[Mike Alexander]

On 5 Jan 2020, at 23:27, John Ralls wrote:

> I want you to code review and test the PR when I finish. ;-)
>
> The online_id comes from from the import source, AQBanking in this 
> particular case--and we must be more careful because the code in 
> question applies to all of the importers except QIF--and the import 
> source doesn't generally contain any commodity information, so basing 
> the match on that is a non-starter.
>
> Returning the first match is what we do now. I get that that was the 
> wrong approach.
>
> As for GnuCash creating a new account when you've got a new TIAA 
> security, does that actually work? For that matter, are you able to 
> connect to your TIAA master account and import transactions for all of 
> the securities you have, all in one go? I thought that GnuCash didn't 
> support that, never mind creating a new security account if it fails 
> to find a match. Mind, this isn't the same as the matcher letting you 
> create a new account when you double-click on a yellow line, this is 
> during the matcher setup when it decides what asset/liability account 
> the transactions belong to.

Yes, the online ID comes from the import source, but the OFX importer is 
dealing with two accounts for investment transactions: the cash account 
and the security account.  It uses the online ID from the OFX record for 
the cash account.  Then around line 635 in gnc-ofx-import.c it 
constructs an online ID for the security account by concatenating that 
with the security's ID.

It also has a commodity for the security account.  This is converted to 
a GnuCash commodity around line 624 and passed to 
gnc_import_select_account.  This function is documented to use this as 
part of the match (although it actually didn't before I changed it) so I 
think using it as part of the match would be ok.

I am certainly able to import a bunch of security transactions for 
several accounts from an OFX file in one go.  I've been doing this every 
month for several years without much trouble.  I just imported 50 or so 
tonight.  It isn't perfect since the cash side of the buy and sell 
transactions is always the parent TIAA account and I have to manually 
enter transactions to properly account for this cash, but it sure helps 
a lot.  Note that I am not connecting to TIAA using AQBanking.  That 
might work, but I download an OFX file from their web site and import 
that.

I don't know for sure that I can create an account during the import 
since it's been a year or two since I created one and I can't recall if 
I did it from within the import or not.  I think I have done this in the 
past. I do know that selecting an existing account from the import 
dialog works fine and this, too, will store the online ID in the 
account.  I tried to munge one of the OFX files I have to cause it to 
create a new account, but didn't manage to do it properly.

Your solution is no doubt more complete and elegant than mine although 
mine seems to work ok.  I'll be glad to give it a try when you're ready.

           Mike