Best practices for data import

[Sébastien de Menten]

Hello David,

As Geert mentionned, there are external tools that can manipulate gnucash
books.
piecash (http://piecash.readthedocs.org/)is one of them that I maintain.
It supports gnucash books in SQL (sqlite, postgres, mysql).

With respect to the official gnucash python bindings, the major differences
are:
+ piecash is python 3 compatible
+ piecash is easy to install
- piecash does not use the official engine ... so use it at your own risk !

kr

sebastien

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 2:59 PM, David Grajal <dgrabla at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thanks! Python bindings looks like the best option then.
>
> - Gnucash has an optional plugin for customer data import, but I was not
> able to make it work the last time I tried (January this year when I
> created a new book).
>
> - I checked the python scripts at gnucash repo. This one
>
> src/optional/python-bindings/example_scripts/new_book_with_opening_balances.py
> looks promising but it doesn't deal with customer data.
>
> Has anybody already written a python script for (tabular) customer import?
>
> Best regards,
> David
>
>
>
> On 05/05/2015 01:09 PM, Geert Janssens wrote:
> > Hi David,
> >
> > Thank you for sharing your experiment.
> > It illustrates what the gnucash developers have always been loud and
> > clear about: don't alter gnucash data outside of the gnucash api !
> >
> > The database is only a data store. None of the business logic rules are
> > stored in there. So if you make modifications outside of gnucash and
> > don't take care of *all* data inter-dependencies yourself you are bound
> > to run into problems as your experiment illustrated.
> >
> > Currently the python bindings are probably the best way to manipulate
> > gnucash data if you don't want to use the gnucash gui.
> >
> > Apart from that you can also write an importer against the c-api or
> > likely even in guile still although I haven't heard anyone using the
> > latter in recent years.
> >
> > I know there are also external applications/tools that support the
> > gnucash datafile format to some extent. Since I haven't tried any of
> > those I won't recommend any. I can't tell how complete their support is.
> > Use them at your own risk.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Geert
> >
> > On Tuesday 05 May 2015 12:47:43 David Grajal wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I'm having trouble importing data into Gnucash SQLITE database.
> >>
> >> 1. I used sqlitebrowser to export the customer table from one gnucash
> >> file and import the data into another
> >> 2. When I open this new gnucash file with 'externally loaded
> >> customers' everything seems to work fine. I can edit the customers. I
> >> can change the customer data. However when I create a NEW customer on
> >> this file, gnucash try to reuse an ID from one of the loaded
> >> customers. Also I can POST invoices with these loaded customers, but
> >> when I try to PAY these already posted invoices Gnucash complains
> >> because one of the following reasons:
> >> a. There is no A/C account available (but it works with other
> >> customers) - Fix if all UUIDs from currencies etc are cleared
> >> b. Gnucash complains it cannot WRITE on the file
> >>
> >> My guess is that we can READ the sqlite with external tools but we
> >> need to use gnucash libraries to WRITE into the database because
> >> there is some kind of data consistency stored somewhere else in the
> >> database. Gnucash doesnt complain initially about this extra data,
> >> but eventually there are problems.
> >>
> >> So my question is: How do you write data into the SQlite? Are you
> >> using the python bindings? Is there a customer-load script? Can I
> >> import the customers data externally and then inform gnucash somehow
> >> to recheck the new customer table?
> >>
> >> Best regards,
> >> David
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