[GNC] OFX import sometimes loses transaction memos

David Carlson david.carlson.417 at gmail.com
Thu Jan 17 00:33:25 EST 2019


I think that I need to spend more time examining the transactions that had
their memos dropped during import to see if I can find a threshold string
length, then file a bug report asking for a short term fix truncating
strings rather than dropping them, and a long term fix accepting up to the
256 character max and truncating after that.

David C

On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 10:44 PM David Reiser <dbreiser at icloud.com> wrote:

> 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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> >>>
> >>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
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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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>
>


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