[GNC-dev] How do I get the "sign" (or side) of the transaction from the account or transaction element in xml?

[Arman Schwarz]

Hi,

I probably didn't use the right terminology in the title. I've implemented
balance assertions for gnucash myself since I couldn't find that feature in
gnucash (https://github.com/armanschwarz/gnc_tools). This allows me to put
expected balances into the ledger and ensure that they remain that way even
if I make changes later on.

This works fine except for the fact that I have to put my assertions in as
negative numbers, e.g. if they're in a liability account. This makes sense
from an accounting equation perspective but it's counterintuitive to see a
negative balance assertion in the ledger against a positive "balance"
(since gnucash GUI shows a liability as a "balance" while the sum of the
transaction values in the XML file will be negative).

It would be helpful if I could somehow look in the transaction element in
XML and figure out whether the "balance" value should be multitplied by 1
or -1 before comparing it with the sum of the individual transactions.

Looking at the XML file though, I didn't see any values that would tell me
this. I could construct a dictionary of "act:type" to "sign", but then I'd
have to manually maintain a possibly large dictionary. That's not the end
of the world, but if that's the solution, is there an exhaustive list of
account types and their sign that I could get access to?