hledger/hledger-web/hledger-web.m4.md

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hledger-web - web interface for the hledger accounting tool

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SYNOPSIS

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

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hledger-web is hledger's web interface. It starts a simple web application 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 (accounts, the current account register, balance charts) and allowing history-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 files 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 operating 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-Sandstorm-Permissions (default: disabled)

hledger input options:

inputoptions

hledger reporting options:

reportingoptions

hledger help options:

helpoptions

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 window, 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 authentication 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 variabel $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

• 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 machine.
• putting it behind an authenticating proxy, using eg apache or nginx
• custom firewall rules

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

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

  • view - allows viewing the journal file and all included files
  • add - allows adding new transactions to the main journal file
  • manage - allows editing, uploading or downloading the main or included files

• 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 includes.

Note, unlike any other hledger command, in this mode you (or any visitor) 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, currently; 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 until 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 provides some API routes that serve JSON in response to GET requests. (And when started with --serve-api, it provides only these routes.):

/accountnames
/transactions
/prices
/commodities
/accounts
/accounttransactions/#AccountName

Also, you can append a new transaction to the journal by sending a PUT request to /add (hledger-web only). As with the web UI's add form, hledger-web must be started with the add capability for this (enabled by default).

The payload should be a valid hledger transaction as JSON, similar to what you get from /transactions or /accounttransactions.

Another way to generate test data is with the readJsonFile/writeJsonFile helpers in Hledger.Web.Json, which can write or read most of hledger's data types to or from a file. Eg here we write the first transaction of a sample journal:

$ make ghci-web
>>> :m +*Hledger.Web.Json
>>> writeJsonFile "txn.json" (head $ jtxns samplejournal)
>>> :q
$ python -m json.tool <txn.json >txn.pretty.json  # optional: make human-readable

(sample output & discussion)

And here's how to test adding that with curl:

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

By default, both the server-side HTML UI and the JSON API are served. Running with --serve-api disables the former, useful if you only want to serve the API.

ENVIRONMENT

LEDGER_FILE

FILES

Reads files

BUGS

The need to precede options with -- when invoked from hledger is awkward.

-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.