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Description:

gnucashweb 0.1.4

GnuCash Web
GnuCash Web is a simple, easy to use, mobile-friendly web interface for
GnuCash intended for self-hosting. It can access a single
GnuCash-Database in sqlite3,
postgres or mysql (including
mariadb) format using the great
piecash GnuCash library for Python.
Development status should be considered at most Beta, see below for
more information.
Check out the demo!
Features
The primary use case for GnuCash Web is adding simple two-split transactions on the
go, e.g. to record a cash expense when buying a coffee.
Key features include:

Browse account hierarchy
View transaction history and balance for an account
Add and edit two-split transactions, delete transactions
Recycle commonly used transactions
Simple single-user authentication
Ease of use, especially on mobile
CLI to update the price database

Browse account hierarchy
View and add transactions
Edit transactions

Core Technology Stack

Python
piecash for accessing GnuCash database
Flask web framework
Bootstrap for front end design

Installation
GnuCash Web is available on PyPI, so you can
simply install it via pip install gnucash_web. Additionally, you may need to install
mysql or psycopg2, depending on which back end you want to use (sqlite back end is
included in the python standard library).
Note that at least Python 3.8 is required.
You also need to setup a database that stores the GnuCash data, see
below for more information. Mind that you will likely need
to be able to access the database directly from your desktop/notebook with the
official GnuCash desktop app, since GnuCash Web is only a companion and not
intended to be used on its own. If your database is not publicly accessible, using an
SSH Tunnel is an easy and secure way to
access it remotely.
Usage
GnuCash Web is aimed at system administrators, but is otherwise easy to set up.
Configuration
Create a config file in /etc/gnucash-web/config.py or in
~/.config/gnucash-web/config.py. If both files are present, values from the latter
override those from the former. Set the environment variable GNUCASH_WEB_CONFIG to load
a different config file. If set, no other config files are read.
Config variables can also be set via environment variables, with the same available options.
The config file is a python script. The following example illustrates possible values for
all available options. This is the normal Flask configuration file, so all standard
configuration
variables
can also be set. All options have default values, but you
should at least set SECRET_KEY and DB_NAME.
import logging

# A 32-bit-key used e.g. to encrypt the session cookie or for other cryptographic operations
# Use e.g. `from Crypto.Random import get_random_bytes; print(get_random_bytes(32))`
SECRET_KEY = 'please use something thats actually safe'

# Python standard library log level
LOG_LEVEL = logging.WARN

# Supported values: 'sqlite', 'mysql' or 'postgres'
DB_DRIVER = 'mysql'

# Host name of the database (ignored for DB_DRIVER = 'sqlite')
DB_HOST = 'database.example.org'

# Name of the Database on the host (for DB_DRIVER = 'sqlite', this is the 'path/to/db.sqlite')
DB_NAME = 'gnucash_data'

# Supported values: None, 'passthrough'. See below for details.
AUTH_MECHANISM = None

# The maximum number of transactions per page in the ledger
TRANSACTION_PAGE_LENGTH = 25

# Name of the account to be preselected when creating new transactions (optional)
PRESELECTED_CONTRA_ACCOUNT = 'Example:Account'

Running
It is not recommended to use the builtin Flask web server in production. GnuCash Web
comes as a WSGI application, so there are many
options available to run it.
Most WSGI web server require setting a "module", which is the WSGI object that runs the
app. For GnuCash Web, this is gnucash_web.wsgi:app.
For example, the following .ini-file might be used as a config for
uWSGI:
[uwsgi]
module = gnucash_web.wsgi:app
pidfile = gnucash_web.pid
master = true
processes = 1
http-socket = :8080
chmod-socket = 660
vacuum = true

Docker
GnuCash Web can be run using Docker, either using the published
packages, DockerFile, or using docker compose
with the provided sample docker-compose.yml files. This uses a simple SQLite backend,
though if you want to use a dedicated database backend then docker-compose-postgres.yml
is also provided, running PostgreSQL as the name implies.
In either case, configuration is done via environment variables in the compose file instead
of the default configuration file. The same options are available.
If you're running a dedicated backend as part of docker compose, then in order to
initialise the database you'll need to
expose the respective ports.
Keep security in mind when exposing ports, such as using a strong password,
as exposing ports may grant any user on the internet access to your database.
If you want to quickly spin up and test gnucash-web, then a sample GnuCash database is
provided for the SQLite version.
The Docker version runs the gunicorn WSGI server.
Initialising database
GnuCash Web only works on a preexisting database. It is also currently not possible
to create accounts. Therefore, you have to create a database and populate it with an
account hierarchy before you can use GnuCash Web.
Preferably, you will use the official GnuCash desktop app to create a new
book. Simply select the appropriate database back end in the Open-dialog. You can
also migrate an existing GnuCash XML file to a database using Save as. More details
and database considerations can be found in the official GnuCash
documentation.
Alternatively, you can also use piecash to create a new book, as is described in
their example
section.
Authentication
Currently, there are only two authentication mechanisms supported, None and 'passthrough'.
When using no authentication, anyone can access the web interface and no credentials are
provided to the database host. This is generally only useful when using the sqlite
back end (which does not accept credentials).
When using pass-through authentication, GnuCash Web asks for username and password upon login,
which are provided as credentials for the database hosts. They are also stored in an
encrypted session cookie in the users browser. "Logging out" simply deletes the session
cookie.
CLI
The CLI is called gnucash-web and is installed with the PyPi package. Currently, the only
supported subcommand is gnucash-web commodities:
Usage: gnucash-web commodities [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
--help Show this message and exit.

Commands:
list List all used commodities.
update_prices Update prices for all commodities for which it is enabled.

You can add/edit commodities using the GnuCash desktop
app. Make sure to
enable online quotes updating. Then, gnucash-web commodities update_prices will retrieve
daily closing prices from Yahoo Finance (Quandl for currencies). See also the piecash
documentation
of the underlying function.
Development
Initialise submodules and install dependencies:
git submodule init
git submodule update
pip install -r requirements.txt

Run it:
export FLASK_APP=gnucash_web
export FLASK_ENV=development
flask run

Build and upload package:
python -m build
python -m twine upload dist/*

Contributing
Development is at an early stage, but contributions are welcome.
This is (currently) a personal project to play around with and satisfy my own everyday
needs and intellectual curiosity.
Since GnuCash Web fulfills my primary use case for it, I don't expect much development
in the near future. However, if anyone is willing to help taking this into a more
feature-rich direction, I am motivated to work on that.
See Issues and
Milestones for some ideas on how
to get started.
Related Work
There seem to be few other projects in the same direction:

The GnuCash mailing list(s) has a few results

In 2003, Martin asked about
this and
was recommended to to use SSH+X-Forwarding to access his GnuCash database
remotely.
In 2005, Sachin said
they are planning to work on a web interface, but I could find no further results.
In 2012, James
posted
about his project
nylen/gnucash-django, but the last
commit is from 2015.

The GnuCash Wiki's
Wishlist lists the
use through a web browser (as well as an iPhone-App) as "WONTFIX" (discussion from
2006/2007).
In 2016, mikedom722 asked on
Reddit,
whether anyone would be interested in a web interface (stating that he has one),
but did not follow up.
In the same thread, superman279 presents his app Remote
GnuCash, but the last commit is
from 2017 and the website is down.
The GnuCash Wiki
mentions two GnuCash mobile apps, one for iOS and one for Android. The one for
Android seems to be discontinued (last commit 2020) the one for iOS still has new
commits in 2022, but its purpose seems to be to export a CSV to be imported in
GnuCash, rather then writing to the database directly.
There is
alensiljak/gnucash-portfolio-webui
on GitHub, but the README does not clearly state what it does. It seems to be only a
exporter for certain reports. Anyway, it was archived in 2022, with last commit
from 2018.

To conclude, all projects in this direction seem to be at most prototypes for playing
around and even those are scarce. The GnuCash dev-team itself doesn't seem to be keen
on providing a real mobile/web alternative, which is perfectly fine and
understandable. I probably wouldn't either if I were them. Luckily, I am not!
License
Copyright © 2023 Joshua Bachmeier joshua@bachmeier.cc
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either
version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any
warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
See LICENSE in this repository or https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ for a copy of
the GNU General Public License.
The contents of the submodules
EncryptedSession (GPLv3),
Selectize (Apache License 2.0),
Bootstrap (MIT License) and
GnuCash (mutually-compatible set of licenses) as
well as all dependencies are published under their own licenses by their respective authors.