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

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NAME

hledger-web - web interface for the hledger accounting tool

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Note there is no built-in access control (aside from listening on 127.0.0.1 by default). So you will need to hide hledger-web behind an authenticating proxy (such as apache or nginx) if you want to restrict who can see and add entries to your journal.

Command-line options and arguments may be used to set an initial filter on the data. This is not shown in the web UI, but it will be applied in addition to any search query entered there.

With journal and timeclock files (but not CSV files, currently) the web app detects changes made by other means and will show the new data on the next request. If a change makes the file unparseable, hledger-web will show an error until the file has been fixed.

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edit form

Note: unlike any other hledger command, web can alter existing journal

data, via the edit form. A numbered backup of the file is saved on

each edit, normally (ie if file permissions allow, disk is not full, etc.)

Also, there is no built-in access control. So unless you run it behind an

authenticating proxy, any visitor to your server will be able to see and

overwrite the journal file (and included files.)

hledger-web disallows edits which would leave the journal file not in

valid journal format. If the file becomes unparseable

by other means, hledger-web will show an error until the file has been

fixed.

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OPTIONS

Note: if invoking hledger-web as a hledger subcommand, write -- before options as shown above.

--serve

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

--host=IPADDR

listen on this IP address (default: 127.0.0.1)

--port=PORT

listen on this TCP port (default: 5000)

--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.

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.)

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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.

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