Strip unwanted dates from QFX files

I can't imagine there are many people out there who are going to find this interesting, let alone useful, but here goes.

I use a software program to manage my finances. Once a month I download a list of transactions for the previous month from my bank and my credit cards. The websites for these institutions allow me to specify a date range, and then download a QFX file that contains all the transactions within that range.

Except for americanexpress.com. Their website only lets me specify a one month range that corresponds to my account's billing cycle.

So, for my half-dozen bank accounts, and my Visa credit card, I can download a QFX file that contains transactions from the beginning of the month to the end of the month. But for Amex I have to download two months of data, from the 9th of the month before, to the 8th of the month after. Or thereabouts.

Big pain in the ass when you're trying to import transactions quickly, because you have to go in and either match transactions or delete duplicates. Yes, I could make all the QFX files correspond to the Amex card's billing cycle, but will only work as long as all the other websites are flexible, and makes keeping a month to month budget more difficult.

So, I wrote a Perl script that will take a QFX file, remove transactions that fall outside a specified range, and then output the remaining transactions to a new file.

(I added a feature that will preserve transactions that fall too far outside of the specified range, in case something weird is going on with the institution's billing. This tolerance can be tuned.)

This script is barely tested, isn't annotated, and probably isn't the most efficient way to do the job. So I don't make any guarantees. If you are actually reading this, and actually want to use the script -- which is about as likely Paris Hilton becoming a nun, or Oprah getting down to a size 2 -- you do so at your own risk.

That said, thar she blows ... (the script, not Oprah) ...

#! /usr/bin/perl

use Time::Local;

$usage = "
USAGE: qfix.pl filename lowdate highdate
DATE FORMAT: MMDDYY
EXAMPLE: qfix file.qfx 010109 013109
";

$infile = $ARGV[0];
$lowdate = $ARGV[1];
$highdate = $ARGV[2];
$lowtol = 31 * 24 * 60 * 60; # days * hr/day * mins/hr * secs/min
$hightol = 30 * 24 * 60 * 60;
$outfile = "$infile.$lowdate-$highdate";

unless ($#ARGV == 2) { die "$usage\n"; };


$ARGV[1] =~ m|\A(\d{2})(\d{2})(\d{2})|;
$lowdate = timelocal(0,0,0,$2,${1}-1,"20$3");

$ARGV[2] =~ m|\A(\d{2})(\d{2})(\d{2})|;
$highdate = timelocal(0,0,0,$2,${1}-1,"20$3");

if ($lowdate > $highdate) { die "$usage\n"; };

open (IFH, "<$infile") or die "Could not open input file $infile\n";
open (OFH, ">$outfile") or die "Could not open output file $outfile\n";

$intag = 0;
$inTHEtag = 0;
$tag = "";

while (read (IFH, $newchar, 1)){

 if ($newchar =~ m|\<|) { $brack = 1 }
 elsif ($newchar =~ m|\>|) { $brack = 2 }
 else { $brack = 0 };

 unless ($intag == 1) {

  unless ($brack == 1) {

   print OFH $newchar;

  } else {

   $intag = 1;
   $tag .= $newchar;

  };

 } else {

  $tag .= $newchar; 

  unless ($inTHEtag == 1) {
  
   if ($brack == 2) {
  
    unless ($tag =~ m|^\$|) {
    
     print OFH "$tag";
     $tag = "";
     $intag = 0;
    
    } else {

     $inTHEtag = 1;

    };
   };
  
  } else {

   if ($brack == 2) {

    if ($tag =~ m|\$|) {
     
     if ($tag =~ m|\(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{2})|) {

      $transdate = timelocal(0,0,0,$3,${2}-1,$1);     
      #print OFH "$tag " . scalar(localtime($transdate)) . " XXX";

     };

     $lowdif = $transdate - $lowdate;
     $highdif = $highdate - $transdate;


     if (
      (($transdate >= $lowdate) && 
      ($transdate <= $highdate)) ||
      ($transdate < ($lowdate - $lowtol)) ||
      ($transdate > ($highdate + $hightol))
     ) {
      print OFH $tag;
     };

     $tag = "";
     $intag = 0;
     $inTHEtag = 0;

    };
   
   }; 
   

  };
   
 }; 

};


close IFH;
close OFH;

HOWTO: Keep your passwords on a USB drive. Access them from different platforms.

I have a lot of online accounts and passwords, and it's becoming impossible to remember them all. So, I have been looking for an open-source, password-management tool to keep track of them.

The problem is that I use multiple computers, and multiple operating systems (Windows, Linux) on a regular basis, so ideally I need something that ...

(a) can be run from a USB device, and
(b) has a front-end GUI for multiple platforms / operating systems.

It appears that this can be done with Password Gorilla (http://fpx.de/fp/Software/Gorilla/).

Password Gorilla is a GUI application that stores passwords in a separate psafe3 database file that is encrypted with the Twofish algorithm.

Password Gorrilla provides an executable file for Windows. For a number of other operating systems, such as Linux, Mac, BSD, and Solaris, Password Gorilla comes in the form of a platform-independent "Starkit" file that will run once you have downloaded the platform-appropriate "Tclkit" from http://www.equi4.com/tclkit/download.html.

Instructions:

These instructions assume you already have a USB drive with a file system that can be read by Windows, Linux, or whatever other OS you're using. I used fat32, but you might be able to use ntfs, as well.

0. Create a folder/directory on the USB device. I called mine "gorilla".

1. Go to http://fpx.de/fp/Software/Gorilla/#Download and download both the Windows executable file, as well as the Linux/Solaris/*BSD Starkit file. Put them in the folder you created.

2. Go to http://www.equi4.com/tclkit/download.html and download the Tclkit for each of the other platforms you will be using. If you don't see the platform you want, look here for a larger list. Use version 8.4 or newer. I downloaded the Linux x86 32-bit Tclkit, version 8.5.1. Put the Tclkit(s) in the folder you created.

3. Make the Tclkit file(s) executable.

In Windows, you launch Password Gorilla by double-clicking (or running) the .exe file.

In Linux (and other *nix), you launch it as follows:

$ ./tclkit-linux-x86 ./gorilla-1.4.kit

I created an executible file containing that above line so that I wouldn't have to type all that every time and so that I could launch it in Linux using a file manager.

Here's what I have, now, in the "gorilla" directory on my USB drive (as seen :

$ pwd
/media/disk/stick/gorilla
$ ls -al
total 4288
drwx------ 2 gideon root 65536 2009-01-08 14:43 .
drwx------ 7 gideon root 65536 2009-01-08 14:46 ..
-rwx------ 1 gideon root 632 2009-01-08 14:15 gkdb.dat
-rwx------ 1 gideon root 1626485 2009-01-08 14:03 gorilla-1.4.exe
-rwx------ 1 gideon root 251221 2009-01-08 13:40 gorilla-1.4.kit
-rwx------ 1 gideon root 37 2009-01-08 13:58 linux-start
-rwx------ 1 gideon root 2180434 2009-01-08 13:40 tclkit-linux-x86
$ cat linux-start
./tclkit-linux-x86 ./gorilla-1.4.kit
$

The result is that I now have a single, encrypted, password database that lives on my USB drive, that can be accessed from both Windows and Linux. (I'll probably add support for Mac, eventually.)