Year end reports

Thomas Spahni tsp at lawbiz.ch
Fri Dec 28 08:14:09 EST 2007


On Wed, 26 Dec 2007, Donald Allen wrote:

   <snip>

> But one of the beauties of gnucash is that the data is represented in
> a standard way, xml in this case. As I've mentioned to this list, I've
> written a report utility for myself that uses an xml parser that is
> part of the python environment, walks the the resulting tree, builds
> the data structures I need, and produces reports (using latex) and
> graphs (using gnuplot). Works great, it's fast, and I'm able to get
> the reports I want in the form I want them.

Hi all,

I fully agree to this and my solution is a similar one, though certainly 
not as sophisticated. I use a simple shell script (and sed - of course) to 
extract data from the xml file and store it into MySQL tables. Then a 
second script (still alpha) will print fancy reports and all formatting is 
done with TeX.

The SQL database serves as well for preparing VAT declarations (a very 
complex issue in my case).

Well, my script burns lots of CPU cycles, but it does the job. And when it 
comes to fancy text formatting there's nothing better than TeX or Latex. I 
don't understand why that wheel should be reinvented.

I wish that gnucash would support this modular approach offering an option 
to export data into MySQL.

Thomas Spahni


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