Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Nicolas Petton]

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Hi guys,

I've been working on a new package named Elbank that I'd like to add to
ELPA.

It's a personal finances reporting tool that uses Weboob[1] for scraping
data from bank websites.  Elbank makes it easy to categorize
transactions, displays various reports, and set a budget.

I attached some screenshots.

I've been a long time Ledger user, but I became tired of doing my own
bookkeeping.  This package is a reporting tool, not an accounting
software.  All it does fetching data building reports.

Here's the project repository: https://gitlab.petton.fr/nico/elbank

[1] https://weboob.org


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Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[raman]

1+ -- really happy to see this come about 
-- 

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > It's a personal finances reporting tool that uses Weboob[1] for scraping
  > data from bank websites.

What sort of thing is Weboob?  Is it a program you can run?  A "web
application" for talking to a server?  Software to run a server?

What job does Weboob do?  The name suggests a site where people
publish seminude selfies, but I doubt that's really what it does.

If it includes software, what is its license?  Is it free software?

I fetched the front page of weboob.org, and it didn't say anything
about those questions, nor show where I could find that information.
I think it listed a place to get the source code, but finding those
answers from the source code would be laborious and slow for me.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Nicolas Petton]

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Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

Hi Richard,

>   > It's a personal finances reporting tool that uses Weboob[1] for scraping
>   > data from bank websites.
>
> What sort of thing is Weboob?  Is it a program you can run?  A "web
> application" for talking to a server?  Software to run a server?

Weboob is a set of tools to interact with websites from the command
line.  It simulates user interactions on a web browser, using Python
scripts.

One of this tools makes it easy to retrieve bank statements from various
bank websites.

> What job does Weboob do?  The name suggests a site where people
> publish seminude selfies, but I doubt that's really what it does.

It's an acronym for "Web Outside Of Browser", and yes, I also find the
joke to be of bad taste.

> If it includes software, what is its license?  Is it free software?

Elbank does not include Weboob, but currently requires it to fetch bank
statements.

Weboob is free software, distributed under the AGPL v3.

Cheers,
Nico

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Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Weboob is a set of tools to interact with websites from the command
  > line.  It simulates user interactions on a web browser, using Python
  > scripts.

It sounds useful.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

It sounds useful, and there's no reason not 

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Boruch Baum]

On 2017-12-17 17:21, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Weboob is a set of tools to interact with websites from the command
>   > line.  It simulates user interactions on a web browser, using Python
>   > scripts.
>
> It sounds useful.

To me, it sounds like a 'bot' framework, which would make FSF/ELPA enablers
for the type anti-social web-izens that have lead us all to suffer all forms
of captcha.

Only putting my two-cents in because the emacs-devel list was cc'ed (and
because I really dislike many forms of bot).

-- 
hkp://keys.gnupg.net
CA45 09B5 5351 7C11 A9D1  7286 0036 9E45 1595 8BC0

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Rasmus]

Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> writes:

> Weboob is a set of tools to interact with websites from the command
> line.  It simulates user interactions on a web browser, using Python
> scripts.
>
> One of this tools makes it easy to retrieve bank statements from various
> bank websites.

Sounds neat, and I like the screenshots of Elbank.  I really like the idea
regexp based accounting.by parsing accounts.

Lazy question: do you know anything about how hard it would be to add a
new backends to boobank?  Neither of my banks seem to be supported.

Rasmus

-- 
A page of history is worth a volume of logic

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Nicolas Petton]

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Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:

> Sounds neat, and I like the screenshots of Elbank.  I really like the idea
> regexp based accounting.by parsing accounts.

Thanks!  The whole idea is that I want to spend as little time as
possible doing accounting, if possible zero :-)

> Lazy question: do you know anything about how hard it would be to add a
> new backends to boobank?  Neither of my banks seem to be supported.

I haven't looked in detail, but they seem to have done a good job at
providing a simple API to add support for new bank websites.  The
abstractions for navigating webpages seems to be neat.

Cheers,
Nico

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Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Weboob is a set of tools to interact with websites from the command
  > line.  It simulates user interactions on a web browser, using Python
  > scripts.

Does it run JS code from the site?  Or do its Python scripts
substitute for the sites' JS code?

This is a crucial question for whether we can use it.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > To me, it sounds like a 'bot' framework,

Is there a difference between a "bot framework" and something that allows
people to automate their communications with web services?

It appears to me this is a case of a general-purpose tool that can be used
for good or for bad.  Like wget.

Is this criticism more valid for Weboob than it would be for wget?

Can you offer a constructive criticism?  A way that Weboob could aid
ethical uses more and unethical uses less?

					     which would make FSF/ELPA enablers
  > for the type anti-social web-izens

No it wouldn't.  Even supposing that your criticism were valid for
Weboob -- which has not been demonstrated -- it would not be valid for
our program, Elbank, which would use Weboob only for doing a
legitimate job.

				       that have lead us all to suffer all forms
  > of captcha.

I see no reason to think Elbank would have that effect.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Nicolas Petton]

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Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Does it run JS code from the site?  Or do its Python scripts
> substitute for the sites' JS code?

It looks like it does run JavaScript from the site, at least when that's
needed to perform an action (like logging in to some bank portals which
require JavaScript).

> This is a crucial question for whether we can use it.

I hope you won't object to the inclusion of Elbank into ELPA because of
that, as I see no other simple and automatic way to fetch bank
statements.

Cheers,
Nico

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Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Does it run JS code from the site?  Or do its Python scripts
  > > substitute for the sites' JS code?

  > It looks like it does run JavaScript from the site, at least when that's
  > needed to perform an action (like logging in to some bank portals which
  > require JavaScript).

To recommend Weboob in the simplest way would be unethical -- we
must not steer people to using that nonfree Javascript code.

Perhaps there is a more complex way to recommend Weboob only for the
cases that don't require nonfree JS code, such that Elbank would
function for some banks and we would not be doing anything wrong.

Do they have a list of which bank portals work without running their
JS code, and which bank portals don't work?  Can you see roughly what
fraction of bank portals require Weboob users to run JS code?

Could we make and recommend a modified version which does not run JS
code from the banks, and will work with some banks?  That would fix
the ethical problem, making it possible for us to distribute Elbank
recommending the modified Weboob.

What we ideally want is to make Weboob handle those bank portals by
working around the JS code.  That would solve the practical problem in
an ethical way.

It will take time to motivate the community to do this, but we need to
think of the long term.  If we can find skilled people who want to do
this for one bank, that would get the ball rolling.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Nicolas Petton]

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Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> To recommend Weboob in the simplest way would be unethical -- we
> must not steer people to using that nonfree Javascript code.

I understand your concerns, and since I am not sure myself whether or
not it always runs JavaScript code and if there is a way to disable
that, I contacted the authors of the software.

Cheers,
Nico

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Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Nicolas Petton]

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Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> writes:

> I understand your concerns, and since I am not sure myself whether or
> not it always runs JavaScript code and if there is a way to disable
> that, I contacted the authors of the software.

It turns out I was wrong, Weboob does not execute JavaScript from
websites.

There seems to be an exception with the PayPal module, which Elbank does
not use.

Nico

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Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Phillip Lord]

Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> writes:

> Rasmus <rasmus@gmx.us> writes:
>
>> Sounds neat, and I like the screenshots of Elbank.  I really like the idea
>> regexp based accounting.by parsing accounts.
>
> Thanks!  The whole idea is that I want to spend as little time as
> possible doing accounting, if possible zero :-)
>
>> Lazy question: do you know anything about how hard it would be to add a
>> new backends to boobank?  Neither of my banks seem to be supported.
>
> I haven't looked in detail, but they seem to have done a good job at
> providing a simple API to add support for new bank websites.  The
> abstractions for navigating webpages seems to be neat.

Don't know if you have seen this:

https://www.openbanking.org.uk/

It's an API for UK banks -- legally mandated I think, soon or in the
future.

Phil

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Nicolas Petton]

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Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk> writes:

> Don't know if you have seen this:
>
> https://www.openbanking.org.uk/
>
> It's an API for UK banks -- legally mandated I think, soon or in the
> future.

Yes, I think it will become a requirement soon for banks in EU to
provide an API.  Unfortunately we're not there yet, so I think that
Weboob is still the best option today.

Cheers,
Nico

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Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > I understand your concerns, and since I am not sure myself whether or
  > not it always runs JavaScript code and if there is a way to disable
  > that, I contacted the authors of the software.

Thanks.  That is a useful thing to do.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Proposal for a new package on ELPA: Elbank

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > It turns out I was wrong, Weboob does not execute JavaScript from
  > websites.

That is good news, but

  > There seems to be an exception with the PayPal module, which Elbank does
  > not use.

that might be a problem (though we could work around it).  Or it might
be no problem at all.  I will ask for more details by responding to
the message they sent to you and me.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See https://stallman.org/skype.html.