[GNC] OFX import sometimes loses transaction memos

[David Reiser]

The OFX 2.1.1 standard limits <MEMO> elements to a maximum of 255 alphanumeric characters. Today’s principles are different from those of a couple (or more) decades ago when these standards were started and both memory and storage were orders of magnitude more expensive than they are now.


--
Dave Reiser
dbreiser at icloud.com





> On Jan 16, 2019, at 11:09 PM, David Cousens <davidcousens at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> David
> 
> Agreed. The OFX format should in principle have no limitation on a string length as it should be anything between
> opening and closing tags, but there may be on importation in GnuCash.  Not familiar enough with the OFX importer to be
> sure whether it imposes any restrictions or not at this stage.
> 
> David Cousens
> On Wed, 2019-01-16 at 18:19 -0600, David Carlson wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 16, 2019, 4:36 PM David Cousens <davidcousens at bigpond.com wrote:
>>> David 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Have you tried examining the file with ofxdump? If you are on Linux, it can
>>> 
>>> be installed with "sudo apt install ofx".  Not sure about how to get it for
>>> 
>>> WIndows or MacOS. It will dump to stdout whatever ofxdump can determine
>>> 
>>> about an ofx response file including error messages. It tests conformance
>>> 
>>> with the libofx librarryofxdump. You may need to use it with the debug
>>> 
>>> switch and possibly the parsing messages if using it without the optional
>>> 
>>> switches doesn't give enough info. I.e.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> $ofxdump --msg_debug --msg_parser<filename>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> David Cousens
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -----
>>> 
>>> David Cousens
>>> 
>>> --
>>> 
>>> Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html
>>> 
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>> 
>> David, 
>> 
>> I have already examined one of the OFX files that has a mix of some trans actions with memos that were and we're not
>> imported with a binary editor and found no difference except possibly number of characters in the string.
>> 
>> Right now I am away from home and cannot try OFX DUMP to see if it knows whether there is a maximum string length, but
>> if there is and it is less than 200 characters I would be surprised. 
>> 
>> If that is true, I would hope that it would truncate strings rather than drop them.
>> 
>> David C arlson
>> 
>> 
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