gnucashxml is a Python library to parse GNU Cash XML files.
This allows writing reporting utilities that do not rely on the GNU
Cash libraries themselves, or require the main program to run at all.
Tested with GNU Cash 2.4.10.
The library supports extracting the account tree, including all transactions and splits. It does not support scheduled transactions, price tables, and likely none but the most basic commodities. In particular, writing of XML files is not supported.
The interface is intended to allow quickly writing reports using
Python. It reuses as many Python data structures as possible. Whenever
dates or times are used, the standard library datetime is used. All
account and transaction balances are represented as the standard
Decimal type.
The three main concepts in GNU Cash are accounts, transactions, and splits. A transaction consists of a number of splits that specify from which account or to which account commodities are transferred by this transaction. All splits within a transaction together are balanced.
The main classes provided by gnucashxml mirror these concepts. A
Book is the main class containing everything else. A Commodity is
what is stored in an account, for example, Euros or Dollars. An
Account is part of a tree structure and contains splits. Splits
again are part of Transactions.
These classes all have a slots member, which is a simple dictionary
for extra information. GNU Cash information such as "hidden" are
recorded here.
import gnucashxml
book = gnucashxml.from_filename("test.gnucash")
income_total = 0
expense_total = 0
for account, subaccounts, splits in book.walk():
if account.actype == 'INCOME':
income_total += sum(split.value for split in account.splits)
elif account.actype == 'EXPENSE':
expense_total += sum(split.value for split in account.splits)
print "Total income : {:9.2f}".format(income_total * -1)
print "Total expense: {:9.2f}".format(expense_total)