Many thanks to Alexandre Rademaker for suggesting the following idea.
Ledger now has an experimental (i.e., not to be published until 3.1, and won't
hold up release) feature: SELECT-style queries. The syntax is very simple,
you state what columns you want, what "table" you want them from, and what
your query is. For example:
ledger select 'date, account, amount from posts where account =~ /Expenses/'
Behind the scenes, what this does is (a) rewrite what you've asked for as a
format string, and (b) setup all the related options (like --limit) to satisfy
your query. What's extra nifty about all this is:
- It honors all the special options, like --amount-width, colorizing,
--bold-if, etc.
- It knows how to properly format and colorize accounts vs. amounts, etc.
- It auto-widens/narrows account/payee names to make the report fit within
the requested --columns
- The column names are actually value expressions; you can query on
"unrounded(amount)", and select will still know it's an amount column
- The width of unrecognized columns is governed by --meta-width
- "from posts" is the default, you don't have to specify it
Some gotchas already (and there will be many with a feature like this):
- Error handling is currently terrible. You can't ask for 'payee' in an
accounts report, and you don't want to try. :)
- The 'account' column in account reports doesn't show up hierarchically yet
- Doesn't yet blank out repeated dates and payee names if they all occur
within the same transaction
To show you an example of the time this can save you, let's say I wanted this
weird register report:
ledger --meta-width=14 -f test/input/sample.dat \
select 'date, aux_date or date, payee, tag("Sample"),' \
'amount, amount * 2' from posts
Here's the formatting string this builds:
%(ansify_if(ansify_if(justify(format_date(date), int(date_width)),green if
color and date > today),bold if should_bold))
%(ansify_if(ansify_if(justify(format_date((aux_date | date)),
int(date_width)),green if color and date > today),bold if should_bold))
%(ansify_if(ansify_if(justify(truncated(payee, int(payee_width)),
int(payee_width)),bold if color and !cleared and actual),bold if should_bold))
%(ansify_if(justify(truncated(tag("Sample"), int(meta_width or 10)),
int(meta_width) or 10),bold if should_bold))
%(ansify_if(justify(scrub(display_amount), int(amount_width),int(date_width) +
1 + int(date_width) + 1 + int(payee_width) + 1 + (int(meta_width) or 10) + 1 +
int(amount_width), true, color), bold if should_bold))
%(ansify_if(justify(scrub((display_amount * {2})),
int(amount_width),int(date_width) + 1 + int(date_width) + 1 + int(payee_width)
+ 1 + (int(meta_width) or 10) + 1 + int(amount_width) + 1 + int(amount_width),
true, color), bold if should_bold))\n
And here's the output:
04-May-01 04-May-01 Checking balance $1,000.00 $2,000.00
04-May-01 04-May-01 Checking balance $-1,000.00 $-2,000.00
04-May-03 04-May-01 Investment balance 50 AAPL 100 AAPL
04-May-03 04-May-01 Investment balance $-1,500.00 $-3,000.00
04-May-14 04-May-14 Páy dày 500.00€ 1000.00€
04-May-14 04-May-14 Páy dày -500.00€ -1000.00€
04-May-14 04-May-14 Another dày in w.. $500.00 $1,000.00
04-May-14 04-May-14 Another dày in w.. $-500.00 $-1,000.00
04-May-14 04-May-14 Another dày in w.. $1,000.00 $2,000.00
04-May-14 04-May-14 Another dày in w.. $-1,000.00 $-2,000.00
04-May-27 04-May-27 Book Store $20.00 $40.00
04-May-27 04-May-27 Book Store $40.00 $80.00
04-May-27 04-May-27 Book Store $30.00 $60.00
04-May-27 04-May-27 Book Store $-90.00 $-180.00
04-May-27 04-May-27 Book Store $-2.00 $-4.00
04-May-27 04-May-27 Credit card comp.. Another Value $20.00 $40.00
04-May-27 04-May-27 Credit card comp.. Value $-20.00 $-40.00
John
