[GNC] future of custom reports in 3.x

[Sébastien de Menten]

Re running reports within gnucash, I have toyed with the idea to be able to
call from gnucash a local web server to run a report and return the HTML to
gnucash (or even other mimetype like an excel, csv or word file). It needed
the Web Client module for guile (
https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Web-Client.html) which
is only avail as of guile 2.0.

With gnucash 3.0 that uses guile 2.2, I will work again on this and I am
more than open to extend the discussion to have a simple protocol/standard
to call a web server (the web server implements a simple Web API to get the
options and another one to get the result when passing both the gnucash URI
and the value of the options). My web server was running locally and was
implemented (obviously) with python and piecash.

Anyone interested ?

sebastien


On Apr 9, 2018 07:14, "Saša Janiška" <gour at atmarama.com> wrote:

John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> writes:

> While we would like to replace the reporting system with something
> more flexible and user friendly we’re a very long way from being in a
> position to even start on it.

OK - that's nice to know. ;)


> In the meantime there are four alternatives for custom reports:

> 4. With an XML file use your favorite language's XML bindings with
> XPATH or XQUERY to retrieve the data and format your report.

I'd rather stay away from fiddling with XML stuff.


> 3. Learn Python and use either the python bindings or PieCash (also
> requires the SQL backend) to query the database and write custom
> reports.

I'll take a closer look at this option.


> 2. Learn SQL and use a SQL backend to extract the data you want. The
> results are generally amenable to import into a spreadsheet for
> further processing; you could also install the appropriate ODBC module
> for your SQL engine of choice and connect to it with Libre/OpenOffice,
> Microsoft Access, or some similar tool with a custom report writer or
> your favorite programming language’s SQL interface (e.g. DBAPI for
> Python).

This one seems to be close to 2nd option...


> 1. Learn Scheme and qof-query to make custom reports for use inside
> GnuCash.

This seems to be the most lucrative option enabling one to take
advantage of GC's infrastructure, but just wonder if replacing qof-query
with SQL query query would still allow using it along with Scheme since
"make reports for use inside GnuCash" certainly has its adavantages?


Sincerely,
Gour

--
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you
are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider
yourself the cause of the results of your activities,
and never be attached to not doing your duty.


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