[GNC] Request for Comments: A simple, mobile-friendly webinterface for GnuCash

[Glenn Fowler]

Joshua,

Great work, this is amazing!

This would solve the mobile access people have been asking about and
eliminate apps by going with the responsive web design.

Question - if you have more than one book, how do you switch between them?

On Thu, Jan 12, 2023 at 7:47 PM Joshua <joshua at bachmeier.cc> wrote:

>
> Good evening everybody,
>
> I recently built a simple web interface for GnuCash and wish to share
> it with you, in the hopes of receiving feedback and thougths and that it
> might be useful to others:
>
> GitHub: https://github.com/joshuabach/gnucash-web
>
> Demo: https://gnucash-web-demo.bachmeier.cc
>
> I have managed all my personal finances in GnuCash for several years,
> including the cash I carry with me. Being able to record expenses or
> other transactions from my phone is therefore a major usecase to me and
> I imagine to many others as well.
>
> Most existing solutions are based around exporting on mobile & importing
> in the desktop app, which doesn't really satisfy me. There has been some
> activity on this topic here before, e.g. in 2012 James posted about his
> project "gnucash-django" [1], but I don't think much came of it (I found a
> few other things, check out the "Related Work" section in my README on
> GitHub if you are interested).
>
> Anyway, back to my project: I got the Idea to do this when I discoverd
> piecash [2] and quickly hacked together an MVP. After some month of
> using, patching and extending it I must say I am quiet happy with the
> result. One can browse accounts, view, add and edit transactions, and
> the like (see the README for a better feature list with screenshots).
>
> The setup is to use one of the database backends instead of the XML
> backend and hook the app up to that. I have the app running on a server
> (with MariaDB) and use an SSH tunnel to access the database directly with
> the
> desktop app.
>
> Whats important to me is that this stays absolutely simple. I don't want
> to replace the desktop app in any way (not that I could). GnuCash Web is
> intended as a "companion" app to record (and mayby fix) simple
> transactions [3] on the go, because I usually forget them until I get home.
>
> Another neat feature is a simple CLI that can be used to get new price
> quotes for all custom securities and currencies in the database. Using
> e.g. a cronjob, the price history for my commodities always stays up to
> date even if I don't open GnuCash for a while.
>
> Ì've been using my app personally for just over a year now and find it
> great. I can no longer imagine using GnuCash for my day-to-day finances
> without it and will probably be using (and therefore maintain it) for
> many years to come.
>
> Alright, thanks for reading to this point. Please do try out the demo,
> look at the repo or even set it up yourself. If you have any thougths,
> suggestions or feedback, please tell me. I'm thankful for any
> response. I'd be happy to engage in a discussion about this.
>
> Best regards,
> Joshua
>
> [1]: https://github.com/sdementen/piecash
> [2]:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2012-March/043762.html
> [3]: With "simple" transaction I mean only two splits
>
> --
> J.
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