Re: [Openledger-developer] Random jottings

[Tony F. <to...@sy...>]

On Mon, 2005-03-21 at 00:30, Klavs Klavsen wrote:
> |
> | # Open a GL Transaction
> | my $gl_trans =
> $acct->start_transaction('Business::Ledger::Transaction::GL');
> |
> hmm dividing them into GL etc. transactions.. I guess this is ok from
> the users point of view. Connecting/binding the transaction to the $acct
> object (which you do here - otherwise $gl_trans->post would not have
> known where to post) is IMHO bad.

Bad? I would argue that it is good. In a web-gui environment it wouldn't
matter one way or the other. HTTP is stateless and can't maintain things
like DB connections between requests. Think of a Perl-Gtk app though, it
would make sense to maintain a DB connection for each transaction,
actually it would be mandatory in order to maintain transaction
isolation.

> What if I have a transaction, I'd like to post in two different
> accounting systems? Or perhaps I have some code that uses the
> transaction object for "something else" (like generating a receipt or
> whatever)?

Copying transactions from system to system would have to be allowed for.
Using them for "something else" is fine What does the API care what you
do with an object.

> I'd prefer having GL etc. as seperate objects (as we have now) - which
> the user who creates the objects, can decide to use for whatever they
> see fit - and then accept these as parameters for f.ex. post_transaction
> - - which could be made to accept both AR,AP and GL transactions.

So you plan on putting the whole 20,000 lines of code that makes up the
backend of SL (SL/*.pm) into one package? That sounds like an even worse
maintenance problem than SL has now to me.

BTW, I was looking at your code in CVS, Why don't you use
Class::Accessor? You could write TransactionLine.pm as:

-SNIP-
package TransactionLine;
 
use strict;
use vars qw($VERSION);
 
$VERSION = "0.1";
sub Version { $VERSION }

use Class::Accessor;
use base qw/Class::Accessor/;

sub new { bless { }, shift; }

TransactionLine->mk_accessors(qw/debit credit accNo/);

1;
__END__
-SNIP-

You get the idea (Copyright info removed for brevity).

> | $gl_trans->reference('test');
> | $gl_trans->date('1-1-2005');
> | $gl_trans->description('This is a test GL entry');
> |
> | # Add some amounts
> | $gl_trans->post_debit($chart->find_account( number => '1820' ), '55.00');
> | $gl_trans->post_debit($chart->find_account( number => '5700' ), '40.00');
> | $gl_trans->post_credit($chart->find_account( number => '1060' ), '95.00');
> 
> Why not just use the accountnumber as referencenr.? Instead of having to
> find the account based on the accountnr.? The accountnr. is afterall
> always unique.
> If it wasn't unique, you couldn't trust find_account to find only one,
> and thus couldn't use it in the context you do here - as you wouldn't be
> sure which one you'd get.

The reason is because post_debit would take a reference to a account
object and how that object reference is found is up to the user of the
API. I could just have easily said:

( $chart->find_account( type => ASSET, name => "%Office Equipment%") )[0]

to use the first account that is an asset account with "Office
Equipment" in its name.

-- 
Tony Fraser
to...@sy...
Sybaspace Internet Solutions                        System Administrator
phone: (250) 246-5368                                fax: (250) 246-5398