
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 1.32.99.  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
       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, not the web UI

       --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).

       --cors=ORIGIN
              allow cross-origin requests from the specified  origin;  setting
              ORIGIN to "*" allows requests from any origin

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

       By  default the server listens on IP address 127.0.0.1, which is acces-
       sible only to requests from the local machine..  You can use --host  to
       listen  on  a  different address configured on the machine, eg to allow
       access from other machines.  The special address 0.0.0.0 causes  it  to
       listen on all addresses configured on the machine.

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

       Similarly,  you can use --port to listen on a TCP port other than 5000.
       This is useful if you want to run multiple hledger-web instances  on  a
       machine.

       --socket=SOCKETFILE
              listen  on  the  given  unix socket instead of an IP address and
              port (unix only; implies --serve)

       When --socket is used,  hledger-web  creates  and  communicates  via  a
       socket  file  instead of a TCP port.  This can be more secure, respects
       unix file permissions, and makes certain use cases easier, such as run-
       ning per-user instances behind an nginx reverse proxy.  (Eg: proxy_pass
       http://unix:/tmp/hledger/${remote_user}.socket;.)

       --base-url=URL
              set the base url (default: http://IPADDR:PORT).

       You can use --base-url to change the protocol, hostname, port and  path
       that  appear in hledger-web's hyperlinks.  This is useful eg when inte-
       grating  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).  Note this affects url  generation
       but not route parsing.

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

       hledger-web also supports many of hledger's general options.  Query op-
       tions and arguments may be used to set an  initial  filter,  which  al-
       though  not  shown in the UI, will restrict the data shown, in addition
       to any search query entered in the UI.

   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

       --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  fu-
              ture-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-1.32.99              February 2024                  HLEDGER-WEB(1)
