is a gnucash API available?

[Anonymous]

>Please define "decent"?  GnuCash's importers work pretty well for QIF,
>OFX, HBCI, and MT940.

Those four importers require a manual human intervention by way of a
GUI.  So you cannot have a script generate transactions, and then call
gnucash to do the import automatically.

QIF and OFX are also arcane formats that do not have sufficient
expressive power to represent that of gnucash data entry, which must
be done manually with a keyboard and mouse.

HBCI is only to synchronize with German banks, and MT940 is limited to
a SWIFT transaction, which would be a hack at best if it's not used to
import an international wire transfer.

What do you tell someone who has an automated system which computes
everything needed for invoicing (and they're not using python)?  Bash,
Tcl, or whatever their system is coded in should have a practical way
to create and post the invoice in gnucash.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that gnucash is very
GUI-centric.  If gnucash had a text interface, it would be possible to
tool the data entry (e.g. using something like Tcl+Expect or perl)
independant of the language gnucash was coded in.  If it had a
commandline means to import, that would also do the job, and there
would be no dependancy on language.

This is what makes Ledger CLI great -- anyone can use any language to
interact with the tool and data.  OTOH, Ledger CLI is too feature poor
to replace GC.  GC and Ledger CLI need each other.  Ledger CLI gives a
great means to get the GC data out of jail (using regular expressions
and having a rich but simple language to express the output format),
so it can easily be manipulated by other tools coded in other
languages.. but the lack of flexibility to move data the other
direction is currently one of the biggest obsticles with gnucash.

Solving the import problem would create more opportunities for users
to help themselves, which would reduce the pressure on gnucash itself
to grow into something large and monolithic.

> The CSV importer is a little weaker.

I don't have that in my version.  Apparently that's new?  I noticed
there is a wishlist record of someone asking for CSV importing
capability:

  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=654671