
hledger-web(1)               hledger User Manuals               hledger-web(1)



NAME
       hledger-web - web interface for the hledger accounting tool

SYNOPSIS
       hledger-web [OPTIONS]
       hledger web -- [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
       hledger  is  a  reliable,  cross-platform  set of programs for tracking
       money, time, or any other commodity, using double-entry accounting  and
       a  simple,  editable  file  format.  hledger is inspired by and largely
       compatible with ledger(1).

       hledger-web is hledger's web interface.  It starts a simple web  appli-
       cation for browsing and adding transactions, and optionally opens it in
       a web browser window if possible.  It provides a more user-friendly  UI
       than the hledger CLI or hledger-ui interface, showing more at once (ac-
       counts, the current account register, balance charts) and allowing his-
       tory-aware data entry, interactive searching, and bookmarking.

       hledger-web  also  lets you share a ledger with multiple users, or even
       the public web.  There is no access control, so if you  need  that  you
       should  put  it  behind  a  suitable  web proxy.  As a small protection
       against data loss when running an unprotected  instance,  it  writes  a
       numbered backup of the main journal file (only ?)  on every edit.

       Like  hledger, it reads data from one or more files in hledger journal,
       timeclock, timedot, or CSV format specified with -f,  or  $LEDGER_FILE,
       or        $HOME/.hledger.journal       (on       windows,       perhaps
       C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).  For more about this  see  hledger(1),
       hledger_journal(5) etc.

OPTIONS
       Command-line options and arguments may be used to set an initial filter
       on the data.  These filter options are not shown in the web UI, but  it
       will be applied in addition to any search query entered there.

       Note:  if invoking hledger-web as a hledger subcommand, write -- before
       options, as shown in the synopsis above.

       --serve
              serve and log requests, don't browse or auto-exit

       --serve-api
              like --serve, but serve only  the  JSON  web  API,  without  the
              server-side web UI

       --host=IPADDR
              listen on this IP address (default: 127.0.0.1)

       --port=PORT
              listen on this TCP port (default: 5000)

       --socket=SOCKETFILE
              use  a unix domain socket file to listen for requests instead of
              a TCP socket.  Implies --serve.  It can only be used if the  op-
              erating system can provide this type of socket.

       --base-url=URL
              set  the  base  url  (default:  http://IPADDR:PORT).   You would
              change this when sharing over the network, or integrating within
              a larger website.

       --file-url=URL
              set the static files url (default: BASEURL/static).  hledger-web
              normally serves static files itself, but if you wanted to  serve
              them  from  another server for efficiency, you would set the url
              with this.

       --capabilities=CAP[,CAP..]
              enable the  view,  add,  and/or  manage  capabilities  (default:
              view,add)

       --capabilities-header=HTTPHEADER
              read  capabilities  to  enable  from a HTTP header, like X-Sand-
              storm-Permissions (default: disabled)

       hledger input options:

       -f FILE --file=FILE
              use  a  different  input  file.   For  stdin,  use  -  (default:
              $LEDGER_FILE or $HOME/.hledger.journal)

       --rules-file=RULESFILE
              Conversion   rules  file  to  use  when  reading  CSV  (default:
              FILE.rules)

       --separator=CHAR
              Field separator to expect when reading CSV (default: ',')

       --alias=OLD=NEW
              rename accounts named OLD to NEW

       --anon anonymize accounts and payees

       --pivot FIELDNAME
              use some other field or tag for the account name

       -I --ignore-assertions
              disable balance assertion checks (note: does not disable balance
              assignments)

       hledger reporting options:

       -b --begin=DATE
              include postings/txns on or after this date

       -e --end=DATE
              include postings/txns before this date

       -D --daily
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by day

       -W --weekly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by week

       -M --monthly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by month

       -Q --quarterly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter

       -Y --yearly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by year

       -p --period=PERIODEXP
              set  start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at once
              using period expressions syntax

       --date2
              match the secondary date instead (see command help for other ef-
              fects)

       -U --unmarked
              include only unmarked postings/txns (can combine with -P or -C)

       -P --pending
              include only pending postings/txns

       -C --cleared
              include only cleared postings/txns

       -R --real
              include only non-virtual postings

       -NUM --depth=NUM
              hide/aggregate accounts or postings more than NUM levels deep

       -E --empty
              show  items with zero amount, normally hidden (and vice-versa in
              hledger-ui/hledger-web)

       -B --cost
              convert amounts to their cost/selling amount at transaction time

       -V --market
              convert amounts to their market value in default valuation  com-
              modities

       -X --exchange=COMM
              convert amounts to their market value in commodity COMM

       --value
              convert  amounts  to  cost  or  market value, more flexibly than
              -B/-V/-X

       --infer-value
              with -V/-X/--value, also infer market prices from transactions

       --auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.

       --forecast
              generate future transactions from  periodic  transaction  rules,
              for  the  next 6 months or till report end date.  In hledger-ui,
              also make ordinary future transactions visible.

       --color=WHEN (or --colour=WHEN)
              Should color-supporting commands use ANSI color  codes  in  text
              output.   'auto' (default): whenever stdout seems to be a color-
              supporting terminal.  'always' or 'yes': always, useful eg  when
              piping  output  into  'less  -R'.   'never'  or  'no': never.  A
              NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this.

       When a reporting option appears more than once in the command line, the
       last one takes precedence.

       Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.

       hledger help options:

       -h --help
              show general usage (or after COMMAND, command usage)

       --version
              show version

       --debug[=N]
              show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)

       A @FILE argument will be expanded to the contents of FILE, which should
       contain one command line option/argument per line.  (To  prevent  this,
       insert a -- argument before.)

       By default, hledger-web starts the web app in "transient mode" and also
       opens it in your default web browser if possible.  In this mode the web
       app will keep running for as long as you have it open in a browser win-
       dow, and will exit after two minutes of inactivity (no requests and  no
       browser  windows  viewing  it).  With --serve, it just runs the web app
       without exiting, and logs requests to the console.   With  --serve-api,
       only  the  JSON  web  api  (see  below)  is served, with the usual HTML
       server-side web UI disabled.

       By default the server listens on IP address 127.0.0.1, accessible  only
       to  local  requests.   You  can  use  --host  to change this, eg --host
       0.0.0.0 to listen on all configured addresses.

       Similarly, use --port to set a TCP port other than 5000, eg if you  are
       running multiple hledger-web instances.

       Both of these options are ignored when --socket is used.  In this case,
       it creates an AF_UNIX socket file at the supplied path  and  uses  that
       for  communication.   This  is  an  alternative way of running multiple
       hledger-web instances behind a reverse proxy that  handles  authentica-
       tion  for  different  users.   The path can be derived in a predictable
       way, eg by using the username within the path.  As an example, nginx as
       reverse  proxy  can use the variable $remote_user to derive a path from
       the username used  in  a  HTTP  basic  authentication.   The  following
       proxy_pass  directive  allows  access to all hledger-web instances that
       created a socket in /tmp/hledger/:

                proxy_pass http://unix:/tmp/hledger/${remote_user}.socket;

       You can use --base-url to change the protocol, hostname, port and  path
       that appear in hyperlinks, useful eg for integrating hledger-web within
       a larger website.  The default is http://HOST:PORT/ using the  server's
       configured host address and TCP port (or http://HOST if PORT is 80).

       With  --file-url  you can set a different base url for static files, eg
       for better caching or cookie-less serving on high performance websites.

PERMISSIONS
       By default, hledger-web allows anyone who can  reach  it  to  view  the
       journal and to add new transactions, but not to change existing data.

       You can restrict who can reach it by

       o setting  the IP address it listens on (see --host above).  By default
         it listens on 127.0.0.1, accessible to all users  on  the  local  ma-
         chine.

       o putting it behind an authenticating proxy, using eg apache or nginx

       o custom firewall rules

       You can restrict what the users who reach it can do, by

       o using the --capabilities=CAP[,CAP..] flag when you start it, enabling
         one or more of the following  capabilities.   The  default  value  is
         view,add:

         o view - allows viewing the journal file and all included files

         o add - allows adding new transactions to the main journal file

         o manage  -  allows editing, uploading or downloading the main or in-
           cluded files

       o using the --capabilities-header=HTTPHEADER flag  to  specify  a  HTTP
         header  from  which it will read capabilities to enable.  hledger-web
         on Sandstorm uses the  X-Sandstorm-Permissions  header  to  integrate
         with Sandstorm's permissions.  This is disabled by default.

EDITING, UPLOADING, DOWNLOADING
       If  you  enable the manage capability mentioned above, you'll see a new
       "spanner" button to the right of the search form.  Clicking  this  will
       let  you edit, upload, or download the journal file or any files it in-
       cludes.

       Note, unlike any other hledger command, in this mode you (or any  visi-
       tor) can alter or wipe the data files.

       Normally  whenever  a  file is changed in this way, hledger-web saves a
       numbered backup (assuming file permissions allow it, the  disk  is  not
       full,  etc.)  hledger-web is not aware of version control systems, cur-
       rently; if you use one, you'll have to arrange to  commit  the  changes
       yourself (eg with a cron job or a file watcher like entr).

       Changes  which would leave the journal file(s) unparseable or non-valid
       (eg with failing balance assertions) are prevented.   (Probably.   This
       needs re-testing.)

RELOADING
       hledger-web detects changes made to the files by other means (eg if you
       edit it directly, outside of hledger-web), and it  will  show  the  new
       data  when  you reload the page or navigate to a new page.  If a change
       makes a file unparseable, hledger-web will display an error message un-
       til the file has been fixed.

       (Note: if you are viewing files mounted from another machine, make sure
       that both machine clocks are roughly in step.)

JSON API
       In addition to the web UI, hledger-web also serves a JSON API that  can
       be  used to get data or add new transactions.  If you want the JSON API
       only, you can use the --serve-api flag.  Eg:

              $ hledger-web -f examples/sample.journal --serve-api
              ...

       You can get JSON data from these routes:

              /accountnames
              /transactions
              /prices
              /commodities
              /accounts
              /accounttransactions/ACCOUNTNAME

       Eg, all account names in the journal (similar to the accounts command).
       (hledger-web's  JSON  does  not include newlines, here we use python to
       prettify it):

              $ curl -s http://127.0.0.1:5000/accountnames | python -m json.tool
              [
                  "assets",
                  "assets:bank",
                  "assets:bank:checking",
                  "assets:bank:saving",
                  "assets:cash",
                  "expenses",
                  "expenses:food",
                  "expenses:supplies",
                  "income",
                  "income:gifts",
                  "income:salary",
                  "liabilities",
                  "liabilities:debts"
              ]

       Or all transactions:

              $ curl -s http://127.0.0.1:5000/transactions | python -m json.tool
              [
                  {
                      "tcode": "",
                      "tcomment": "",
                      "tdate": "2008-01-01",
                      "tdate2": null,
                      "tdescription": "income",
                      "tindex": 1,
                      "tpostings": [
                          {
                              "paccount": "assets:bank:checking",
                              "pamount": [
                                  {
                                      "acommodity": "$",
                                      "aismultiplier": false,
                                      "aprice": null,
              ...

       Most of the JSON corresponds to hledger's data types;  for  details  of
       what  the fields mean, see the Hledger.Data.Json haddock docs and click
       on the various data types, eg Transaction.  And for a higher level  un-
       derstanding, see the journal manual.

       In some cases there is outer JSON corresponding to a "Report" type.  To
       understand that, go to the Hledger.Web.Handler.MiscR haddock  and  look
       at  the  source for the appropriate handler to see what it returns.  Eg
       for /accounttransactions it's getAccounttransactionsR, returning a "ac-
       countTransactionsReport  ...".   Looking up the haddock for that we can
       see that  /accounttransactions  returns  an  AccountTransactionsReport,
       which  consists  of a report title and a list of AccountTransactionsRe-
       portItem (etc).

       You can add a new transaction to the journal  with  a  PUT  request  to
       /add,  if  hledger-web  was started with the add capability (enabled by
       default).  The payload must be the full, exact JSON representation of a
       hledger  transaction  (partial data won't do).  You can get sample JSON
       from hledger-web's /transactions or /accounttransactions,  or  you  can
       export it with hledger-lib, eg like so:

              .../hledger$ stack ghci hledger-lib
              >>> writeJsonFile "txn.json" (head $ jtxns samplejournal)
              >>> :q

       Here's how it looks as of hledger-1.17 (remember, this JSON corresponds
       to hledger's Transaction and related data types):

              {
                  "tcomment": "",
                  "tpostings": [
                      {
                          "pbalanceassertion": null,
                          "pstatus": "Unmarked",
                          "pamount": [
                              {
                                  "aprice": null,
                                  "acommodity": "$",
                                  "aquantity": {
                                      "floatingPoint": 1,
                                      "decimalPlaces": 10,
                                      "decimalMantissa": 10000000000
                                  },
                                  "aismultiplier": false,
                                  "astyle": {
                                      "ascommodityside": "L",
                                      "asdigitgroups": null,
                                      "ascommodityspaced": false,
                                      "asprecision": 2,
                                      "asdecimalpoint": "."
                                  }
                              }
                          ],
                          "ptransaction_": "1",
                          "paccount": "assets:bank:checking",
                          "pdate": null,
                          "ptype": "RegularPosting",
                          "pcomment": "",
                          "pdate2": null,
                          "ptags": [],
                          "poriginal": null
                      },
                      {
                          "pbalanceassertion": null,
                          "pstatus": "Unmarked",
                          "pamount": [
                              {
                                  "aprice": null,
                                  "acommodity": "$",
                                  "aquantity": {
                                      "floatingPoint": -1,
                                      "decimalPlaces": 10,
                                      "decimalMantissa": -10000000000
                                  },
                                  "aismultiplier": false,
                                  "astyle": {
                                      "ascommodityside": "L",
                                      "asdigitgroups": null,
                                      "ascommodityspaced": false,
                                      "asprecision": 2,
                                      "asdecimalpoint": "."
                                  }
                              }
                          ],
                          "ptransaction_": "1",
                          "paccount": "income:salary",
                          "pdate": null,
                          "ptype": "RegularPosting",
                          "pcomment": "",
                          "pdate2": null,
                          "ptags": [],
                          "poriginal": null
                      }
                  ],
                  "ttags": [],
                  "tsourcepos": {
                      "tag": "JournalSourcePos",
                      "contents": [
                          "",
                          [
                              1,
                              1
                          ]
                      ]
                  },
                  "tdate": "2008-01-01",
                  "tcode": "",
                  "tindex": 1,
                  "tprecedingcomment": "",
                  "tdate2": null,
                  "tdescription": "income",
                  "tstatus": "Unmarked"
              }

       And here's how to test adding it with curl.  This should add a new  en-
       try to your journal:

              $ curl http://127.0.0.1:5000/add -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-binary @txn.json

ENVIRONMENT
       LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified with -f.  Default:
       ~/.hledger.journal (on  windows,  perhaps  C:/Users/USER/.hledger.jour-
       nal).

       A  typical  value  is  ~/DIR/YYYY.journal,  where DIR is a version-con-
       trolled finance directory and YYYY is the current year.  Or  ~/DIR/cur-
       rent.journal, where current.journal is a symbolic link to YYYY.journal.

       On Mac computers, you can set this and other environment variables in a
       more thorough way that also affects applications started from  the  GUI
       (say, an Emacs dock icon).  Eg on MacOS Catalina I have a ~/.MacOSX/en-
       vironment.plist file containing

              {
                "LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/current.journal"
              }

       To see the effect you may need to killall Dock, or reboot.

FILES
       Reads data from one or more files in hledger journal, timeclock,  time-
       dot,   or   CSV   format   specified   with  -f,  or  $LEDGER_FILE,  or
       $HOME/.hledger.journal          (on          windows,           perhaps
       C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).

BUGS
       The  need  to precede options with -- when invoked from hledger is awk-
       ward.

       -f- doesn't work (hledger-web can't read from stdin).

       Query arguments and some hledger options are ignored.

       Does not work in text-mode browsers.

       Does not work well on small screens.



REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC  channel
       or hledger mail list)


AUTHORS
       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors


COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 2007-2019 Simon Michael.
       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.


SEE ALSO
       hledger(1),      hledger-ui(1),     hledger-web(1),     hledger-api(1),
       hledger_csv(5), hledger_journal(5), hledger_timeclock(5), hledger_time-
       dot(5), ledger(1)

       http://hledger.org



hledger-web 1.18.99             September 2020                  hledger-web(1)
