I have used GnuCash for many years, building up huge XML files, and never had an issue until I tried some auto-entry with a program. If the file is not EXACTLY what it expects, it will fail.

No problem getting data out, though it can be processor intensive to rebuild the trees. But I have not had the patience to dig into source code to be able to write to it.

It would be nice to have a high level API to allow auto entry, modify reports, etc.

-Dan

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 3:04 AM, Hartmut W Sager <hwsager@marityme.net> wrote:

OK, it's late at night, and I did something that Trevor likes doing. :) I went looking for trouble. But hey, I had a good reason, and had been planning this experiment for weeks already.

My current accounting is still my own FoxPro concoction (started in 1992 and updated a few hundred times), and for the last few years I knew I would have to move it. Besides export/import issues, I have several extra fields of information that I need to preserve (even if not accessible outside of raw XML editing), so I edited a good GnuCash native XML file by adding a secret payload in one existing transaction with <mynewtag>mypayload</mynewtag>, at the same level as the other fields of that transaction. I was hoping it would be ignored on load, and restored on save.

The result: GnuCrash crashed totally while opening the edited XML file! Yeah, just crashed with a crash message and self-quit after that. Is GnuCash that unstable???

BTW, a simple raw XML edit of an existing text field of a transaction works fine, and is then shown in GnuCash when the file is opened.

Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331

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