[GNC] Java APIs for gnucash

[John Ralls]

Impressive work.

Just one minor detail: GnuCash is licensed under the GNU General Public License V2 or later, and one condition of that license is that any derivative work must also be released under that license. You’re including our headers and linking our libraries, so your library is a derivative work. The Apache License 2.0 does *not* meet the requirements of the GPL (though the reverse is true for GPL V3) so Apache Licensed projects can *not* be derivative of GPL-licensed code [1]. Please replace the LICENSE file in your repo with the GPL COPYING and place a comment with the GPL notice at the top of each source file.

Regards,
John Ralls

[1] https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html

> On May 18, 2026, at 13:35, NH Rao <nhrdls at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> https://github.com/nhrdl/java-gnucash
> 
> This started with my own need, it has been tested on only one real life
> GNUcash datafile - mine, so if you choose to use it, please be careful and
> make sure you have adequate backups.
> For my use cases it seems to work the way I want it to work. If you are
> comfortable with Java and want to play around, please feel free.
> 
> I am especially looking for experience on other operating systems and other
> forms of gnucash data such as databases etc. Technically it should work as
> it's just a URI, but practically it might not behave. It has been only
> tested on a platform available to me - Ubuntu 24.04 and gnucash version 5.5
> 
> This library is Java binding for gnucash API. While there are multiple Java
> libraries available, as far as I know, none of the libraries use the API
> exposed by gnucash. This library uses the same technique sample python
> scripts included with gnucash use - load the shared library and call
> functions from the library.
> 
> So far, I am able to achieve most of what python utilities do, may not be
> exactly the same approach, but functionality is there.
> 
> I'd some specific needs, some related to reports, some related to data
> input. For the reports, I've invested in the same mutual fund in multiple
> accounts. It was getting harder for me to keep track of total investment
> because of my account structure. There is a utility that outputs the
> information for a given commodity as gnucash calls it, from all the
> accounts.
> 
> For input, I wanted to read my paystub PDF file and create entries
> automatically. This includes gross/net pay, taxes and deductions splits.
> Similar story for my mortgage. Read the PDF statement and create splits
> automatically based on information coming from the PDF.
> 
> Lastly, updating the stock/fund prices. I found an API from Twelve data and
> used it to update the prices. I've no relationship with Twelve data apart
> from creating the API key and using the free version of API. Twelve data
> throttles the calls, so code will notice the throttling and wait until
> throttling timeout is done.
> 
> While sample utilities are working, it's very hard to illustrate with
> examples as this is real life confidential data. For PDF files, generally
> speaking there are two parts, a part which reads data from PDF and another
> part that actually creates the transaction and splits. For splits, code
> uses a simple mapping file that maps relevant entries from PDF to account
> GUID. These mapping files are available in code.
> 
> Hope you also enjoy,
> 
> Niranjan
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.