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lynofx

Command-line client for OFX requests ("Lynx for OFX")

The lynofx.py script is a command-line OFX client -- the name is meant to suggest "Lynx for OFX." This can be very useful when testing out OFX connections or debugging a connection to a particular server, or just for getting your data out of your bank on the command line.

Installation

Python 2.6 or above is required. The project has not been tested at all with Python 3.

The lynofx project depends on another Wesabe repo, fixofx. fixofx is a submodule of the lynofx project as a result.

First, clone the repo from GitHub:

git clone git://github.com/wesabe/lynofx.git

Then, initialize the submodule:

cd lynofx
git submodule init
git submodule update

With that you should be good to go.

Options

lynofx.py requires a number of options to work. Some of the options ask for account information, but many ask for OFX parameters that are required for the request. Unfortunately the OFX parameters for different financial institutions are not well known, and they are not included with this script. The three values needed are the OFX URL, OFX FID, and OFX ORG. One place to look for these values is at the GNUCash wiki or just searching on Google. If neither of those work, try calling your financial institution and asking them; larger credit unions, especially, are sometimes willing to help.

Invoke lynofx.py with the options for your institution, any other options needed, and the action you want to perform. Three actions are supported:

  • profile -- This returns a profile of the institution. Generally, you don't need this profile for anything, but if you were building an OFX server crawler, the data in the profile would be useful. Also, since you don't need a username or password for the institution to get the profile (usually), the profile action is a good "ping" test to see if the server is up and considers your request well-formed. The profile action requires the -f, -o, and -u options.
  • accounts -- This returns a list of the accounts this institution has for a given username and password. This is very useful, since asking for a statement from an institution requires a lot of the information in the account information list, and sometimes helps show you the expected format for those values when you're making statement requests. (For instance, USAA account numbers are eight digits, but their OFX server expects a ten-digit account number, zero-padded, such as 0012345678. Since the account info response shows the format exactly as they expect it, you can avoid errors by using this value instead of entering the number any other way.) Specifically, the BANKID, ACCTID, and ACCTTYPE fields in the account info list are needed for the statement action, below. The accounts action requires the -f, -o, and -u options, and a username and password for the institution.
  • statement -- This returns a statement for the account requested, including current balances and a list of transactions. See the accounts action, above, to learn the required option values for this action. The statement action requires the -f, -o, -u, -b, -i, and -t options, and a username and password for the institution.

Use the lynofx.py script like this:

./lynofx.py [options] (profile|accounts|statement)

The command-line options supported by lynofx.py are as follows:

--version                          show program's version number and exit
-h, --help                         show this help message and exit
-v, --verbose                      be more talkative, social, outgoing
-r, --raw                          show raw response (don't pretty-print as OFX/2.0)
-f FID, --fid=FID                  OFX ID of the financial institution
-o ORG, --org=ORG                  OFX organization of the financial institution
-u URL, --url=URL                  OFX URL of the financial institution
-t ACCTTYPE, --accttype=ACCTTYPE   type of the account
-i ACCTID, --acctid=ACCTID         ID of the account (a.k.a. account number)
-b BANKID, --bankid=BANKID         ID of the bank (a.k.a. routing number)

The script will prompt for username and password, if required, after it is run.

Contributing

Contributions to lynofx are welcome. Here are some ideas for things to do:

  • Allow the user to specify a username and password from the command line or a config file so the script can be run out of cron.
  • Allow the user to configure the user-agent string and the client identifier claimed.
  • Add options for specifying the date range of the request.