
HLEDGER-WEB(1)               hledger User Manuals               HLEDGER-WEB(1)

NAME
       hledger-web - robust, friendly plain text accounting (Web version)

SYNOPSIS
       hledger-web    [--serve|--serve-api] [OPTS] [ARGS]
       hledger web -- [--serve|--serve-api] [OPTS] [ARGS]

DESCRIPTION
       This  manual is for hledger's web interface, version 1.31.99.  See also
       the hledger manual for common concepts and file formats.

       hledger is a robust, user-friendly, cross-platform set of programs  for
       tracking  money,  time,  or any other commodity, using double-entry ac-
       counting and a simple, editable file format.  hledger  is  inspired  by
       and  largely  compatible  with  ledger(1), and largely interconvertible
       with beancount(1).

       hledger-web is a simple web application for browsing and adding  trans-
       actions.   It  provides a more user-friendly UI than the hledger CLI or
       hledger-ui TUI, showing more at once  (accounts,  the  current  account
       register, balance charts) and allowing history-aware data entry, inter-
       active searching, and bookmarking.

       hledger-web  also lets you share a journal 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 from (and appends to) a journal file specified
       by   the    LEDGER_FILE    environment    variable    (defaulting    to
       $HOME/.hledger.journal);  or you can specify files with -f options.  It
       can also read timeclock files, timedot files, or any  CSV/SSV/TSV  file
       with a date field.  (See hledger(1) -> Input for details.)

       hledger-web can be run in three modes:

       o Transient mode (the default): your default web browser will be opened
         to  show  the  app if possible, and the app exits automatically after
         two minutes of inactivity (no requests received and no  open  browser
         windows viewing it).

       o With  --serve:  the  app runs without stopping, and without opening a
         browser.

       o With --serve-api: only the JSON API is served.

       In all cases hledger-web runs as a foreground process, logging requests
       to stdout.

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.

       hledger-web provides the following options:

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

       --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).   Note:  affects
              url  generation but not route parsing.  Can be useful if running
              behind a reverse web proxy that does path rewriting.

       --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.

       --allow=view|add|edit
              set the user's access level for changing  data  (default:  add).
              It  also  accepts sandstorm for use on that platform (reads per-
              missions from the X-Sandstorm-Permissions request header).

       --test run hledger-web's tests and exit.  hspec test  runner  args  may
              follow a --, eg: hledger-web --test -- --help

       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.

       hledger-web also supports many of hledger's general  options  (and  the
       hledger manual's command line tips also apply here):

   General help options
       -h --help
              show general or COMMAND help

       --man  show general or COMMAND user manual with man

       --info show general or COMMAND user manual with info

       --version
              show general or ADDONCMD version

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

   General 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)

       -s --strict
              do  extra error checking (check that all posted accounts are de-
              clared)

   General reporting options
       -b --begin=DATE
              include postings/txns on or after this date (will be adjusted to
              preceding subperiod start when using a report interval)

       -e --end=DATE
              include postings/txns before this date (will be adjusted to fol-
              lowing subperiod end when using a report interval)

       -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)

       --today=DATE
              override   today's  date  (affects  relative  smart  dates,  for
              tests/examples)

       -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-equity
              infer conversion equity postings from costs

       --infer-costs
              infer costs from conversion equity postings

       --infer-market-prices
              use  costs as additional market prices, as if they were P direc-
              tives

       --forecast
              generate transactions from periodic rules,  between  the  latest
              recorded  txn  and  6 months from today, or during the specified
              PERIOD (= is required).  Auto posting rules will be  applied  to
              these  transactions  as  well.  Also, in hledger-ui make future-
              dated transactions visible.

       --auto generate extra postings by applying auto posting  rules  to  all
              txns (not just forecast txns)

       --verbose-tags
              add  visible tags indicating transactions or postings which have
              been generated/modified

       --commodity-style
              Override the commodity style in the  output  for  the  specified
              commodity.  For example 'EUR1.000,00'.

       --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.

       --pretty[=WHEN]
              Show  prettier  output,  e.g.  using unicode box-drawing charac-
              ters.  Accepts 'yes' (the default) or 'no' ('y', 'n',  'always',
              'never'  also  work).   If  you provide an argument you must use
              '=', e.g.  '--pretty=yes'.

       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.

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:

              /version
              /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 docs.

       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

DEBUG OUTPUT
   Debug output
       You can add --debug[=N] to the command line to  log  debug  output.   N
       ranges from 1 (least output, the default) to 9 (maximum output).  Typi-
       cally  you would start with 1 and increase until you are seeing enough.
       Debug output goes to stderr, interleaved with the  requests  logged  on
       stdout.  To capture debug output in a log file instead, you can usually
       redirect stderr, eg:
       hledger-web --debug=3 2>hledger-web.log.

ENVIRONMENT
       LEDGER_FILE  The  main  journal  file  to  use  when not specified with
       -f/--file.  Default: $HOME/.hledger.journal.

BUGS
       We  welcome  bug  reports  in  the  hledger  issue  tracker  (shortcut:
       http://bugs.hledger.org),  or on the #hledger chat or hledger mail list
       (https://hledger.org/support).

       Some known issues:

       Does not work well on small screens, or in text-mode browsers.



AUTHORS
       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors.
       See http://hledger.org/CREDITS.html


COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 2007-2023 Simon Michael and contributors.


LICENSE
       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.


SEE ALSO
       hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1)

hledger-web-1.31.99              November 2023                  HLEDGER-WEB(1)
