Pre-process OFX download?

[David Reiser]

On 12/1/2015 12:34, jmk wrote:
> Is it possible to d/l an OFX file directly (so I can then parse it
> before importing into GNUCash)? I cannot find a way to do it in the
> program itself... I found mentions of a tool that can do this, but the
> site linked is a 404 now. (http://www.jongsma.org/ofx/)
>
> My bank does not allow downloads of OFX/QIF etc from the web afaik. Only
> from programs like Quicken/GnuCash, etc via OFX
If you are on a Unix variant, you can turn on aqbanking logging via an 
environment variable, start the direct connect session in gnucash, 
cancel the gnucash import in the transaction matcher dialog, then open 
the ofx.log file (usually in /tmp) and retrieve the ofx stream. I'm not 
near my gnucash machine at the moment, so I can't tell you what that 
environment variable is. And I don't know if windows has any way to 
accommodate system variables for unix-like programs.

There are several (more) annoyances about this approach:
The log file contains both the query and response phases of the ofx 
connection, so,
The log file contains your account ID and password in plain text.
Unless you delete the ofx.log file between sessions, aqbanking just 
appends new sessions to the end of the file until the file is deleted on 
a reboot.

Despite its annoyances, the log file does enable me to retrieve things 
like the error message generated by Chase's abominable attempt to change 
their login authentication procedure starting on Thanksgiving day last 
week. Gnucash doesn't display much of the error information in a 
completed, but not successful ofx session.

Dave