API Questions

[John Ralls]

Please remember to copy the list on all replies so that everyone benefits from what you learn.

Regards,
John Ralls

> On May 5, 2026, at 17:01, NH Rao <nhrdls at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for the reply. If you want, I can share the github link within a couple of days after I feel a bit more comfortable. This was my first forrey with Java FFM and based on what I am seeing so far, it can be very useful. I was able to run basic gnucash code in a day, including gnc_numeric which was a bit more challenging.
> 
> As for the backend, I am just calling gnc_engine_init. This seems to be doing proper things for me like loading the file backend.
> 
> I've few lofty goals in mind and will eventually start moving in that direction. These include getting the amount due from my PDF statements for various bills and creating corresponding transactions and creating splits for my salary stub entries.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Niranjan
> 
> On Tue, May 5, 2026 at 4:41 PM John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us <mailto:jralls at ceridwen.us>> wrote:
>> This sounds like an interesting experiment!
>> 
>> There’s nothing special about header file naming. The original XACC headers had capitalized names, very few of the later ones do. Note, though, that headers having the .hpp suffix export C++-mangled symbols and I don’t think Java can link those without SWIG bindings.
>> 
>> You’ll need at least libgnc-core-utils.so <http://core-utils.so/>, it has utilities that the engine depends on. You’ll also need at least one of the backend libraries to handle persistence unless you’re planning to write your own.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
>> 
>> 
>> > On May 5, 2026, at 1:30 PM, NH Rao <nhrdls at gmail.com <mailto:nhrdls at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Greetings,
>> > 
>> > I am experimenting with Java FFM API to call gnucash API functions. So far I am able to emulate the functionality of bindings/python/example_scripts/export_account_totals.py with similar results. This was a just POC and now I am seriously attempting to write proper code.
>> > 
>> > Some questions
>> > 
>> > I am using headers files which start with capital letters (e.g. Account.h) as it felt like convention is to expose API from these files. Did I get this right?
>> > 
>> > I am just using libgnc-engine.so when importing a shared library. Do I need to import any other shared libraries for the API functionality?
>> > 
>> > Many functions return const char* e.g. const char * xaccAccountGetName (const Account *account); but the header file does not mention that the caller has to free the returned pointer. But gnc_numeric_to_string explicitly mentions that the caller has to free the memory.  Is it safe to assume that if there is no explicit comment, I don't need to worry about freeing the memory
>> > 
>> > Regards,
>> > 
>> > Niranjan
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > gnucash-devel mailing list
>> > gnucash-devel at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-devel at gnucash.org>
>> > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>> 

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