API questions

[David Goodenough]

On Friday 10 June 2016 08:29:01 John Ralls wrote:
> > On Jun 10, 2016, at 7:06 AM, David Goodenough
> > <david.goodenough at linkchoose.co.uk> wrote:> 
> > On Friday 10 June 2016 06:59:38 John Ralls wrote:
> >>> On Jun 10, 2016, at 2:05 AM, David Goodenough
> >>> <david.goodenough at linkchoose.co.uk> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> I notice when looking at the API pages that a method is defined as
> >>> starting
> >>> at a given line, and then the code below always starts on the next line,
> >>> i.e. missing out the prototype.  For example:-
> >>> 
> >>> Definition at line 116 of file print-session.c.
> >>> 
> >>> 117 {
> >>> 118     return print_settings;
> >>> 119 }
> >>> 
> >>> Would it not be possible to show line 116 as well?  This seems to be a
> >>> consistent problem throughout the docs.
> >> 
> >> The prototype is in very large print above the description. Repeating it
> >> in
> >> the listing would be redundant.
> > 
> > OK, missed that.  It just looked odd at first glance that the line number
> > immedately before the code was not in the code that was shown.
> > 
> >>> The reason I was looking was to generate customer reports via the API.
> >>> I would like to be able to generate a report for each customer who
> >>> either
> >>> has a non-zero balance or where some transaction (invoice or receipt of
> >>> payment) happened last month (or since rather since I last ran the
> >>> program). I then want to export the report as a PDF.  I have looked my
> >>> way through the API docs but could not see how to generate reports, or
> >>> to
> >>> check for the balance or the presence of transactions since a date.
> >>> 
> >>> I found docs on how to create invoices, but also need to be able to
> >>> export them as PDFs and could not locate the API for that either.  I
> >>> notice
> >>> in the gnucash XML files that the last direcorty to which invoices ( and
> >>> I
> >>> guess customer reports ) were exported is stored, is this available from
> >>> the API.
> > 
> > I think having read a bit further that this is in the customer dictionary?
> > 
> >>> What I want to be able to write is a program that will generate reports
> >>> for all relevant customers, and then send an email to each customer who
> >>> has either an invoice and/or a report containing both.
> >>> 
> >>> Any pointers gratefully received.
> >> 
> >> PDF generation is provided by (IIRC) libgtk as part of printing support.
> >> You won't find the code for that in GnuCash itself.
> > 
> > OK, but I still need to tell it to generate the customer report, and to
> > check whether I need to do so?
> 
> Sorry, neither of those questions make sense.
I will try to restate them:-

1) From the UI I can request a customer report and tell the UI to export it as
a PDF.  How do I achieve the same from the API?  

2) Looking at the customer report I can see if the report shows a non-zero
balance or has transactions in the last month.  How can I check the balance
and see if there are invoices or receipts for a given customer in the last 
month though the API?

Obviously I would like to have dataset format independance rather than going 
direct to the data, so I want to do as much as possible through the API.

David
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls