actualpy

Python API implementation for Actual server.

Actual Budget is a superfast and privacy-focused app for managing your finances.

[!WARNING] The Javascript API to interact with Actual server already exists, and is battle-tested as it is the core of the Actual frontend libraries. If you intend to use a reliable and well tested library, that is the way to go.

Installation

Install it via Pip:

pip install actualpy

If you want to have the latest git version, you can also install using the repository url:

pip install git+https://github.com/bvanelli/actualpy.git

Basic usage

The most common usage would be downloading a budget to more easily build queries. This would you could handle the Actual database using SQLAlchemy instead of having to retrieve the data via the export. The following script will print every single transaction registered on the Actual budget file:

from actual import Actual
from actual.queries import get_transactions

with Actual(
    base_url="http://localhost:5006",  # Url of the Actual Server
    password="<your_password>",  # Password for authentication
    encryption_password=None,    # Optional: Password for the file encryption. Will not use it if set to None.
    file="<file_id_or_name>",  # Set the file to work with. Can be either the file id or file name, if name is unique
    data_dir="<path_to_data_directory>",  # Optional: Directory to store downloaded files. Will use a temporary if not provided
    cert="<path_to_cert_file>"  # Optional: Path to the certificate file to use for the connection, can also be set as False to disable SSL verification
) as actual:
    transactions = get_transactions(actual.session)
    for t in transactions:
        account_name = t.account.name if t.account else None
        category = t.category.name if t.category else None
        print(t.date, account_name, t.notes, t.amount, category)

The file will be matched to either one of the following:

The name of the budget, found top the top left cornet
The ID of the budget, a UUID that is only available if you inspect the result of the method list_user_files
The Sync ID of the budget, a UUID available on the frontend on the "Advanced options"
If none of those options work for you, you can search for the file manually with list_user_files and provide the object directly:

from actual import Actual

with Actual("http://localhost:5006", password="mypass") as actual:
    actual.set_file(actual.list_user_files().data[0])
    actual.download_budget()

Adding new transactions

After you created your first budget (or when updating an existing budget), you can add new transactions by adding them using the actual.session.add() method. You cannot use the SQLAlchemy session directly because that adds the entries to your local database, but will not sync the results back to the server (that is only possible when re-uploading the file).

The method will make sure the local database is updated, but will also send a SYNC request with the added data so that it will be immediately available on the frontend:

import decimal
import datetime
from actual import Actual
from actual.queries import create_transaction, create_account

with Actual(base_url="http://localhost:5006", password="mypass", file="My budget") as actual:
    act = create_account(actual.session, "My account")
    t = create_transaction(
        actual.session,
        datetime.date.today(),
        act,
        "My payee",
        notes="My first transaction",
        amount=decimal.Decimal(-10.5),
    )
    actual.commit()  # use the actual.commit() instead of session.commit()!

Will produce:

added-transaction

Updating existing transactions

You may also update transactions using the SQLModel directly, you just need to make sure to commit the results at the end:

from actual import Actual
from actual.queries import get_transactions

with Actual(base_url="http://localhost:5006", password="mypass", file="My budget") as actual:
    for transaction in get_transactions(actual.session):
        # change the transactions notes
        if transaction.notes is not None and "my pattern" in transaction.notes:
            transaction.notes = transaction.notes + " my suffix!"
    # commit your changes!
    actual.commit()

[!IMPORTANT] You can also modify the relationships, for example the transaction.payee.name, but you to be aware that this payee might be used for more than one transaction. Whenever the relationship is anything but 1:1, you have to track the changes already done to prevent modifying a field twice.

Generating backups

You can use actualpy to generate regular backups of your server files. Here is a script that will backup your server file on the current folder:

from actual import Actual
from datetime import datetime

with Actual(base_url="http://localhost:5006", password="mypass", file="My budget") as actual:
    current_date = datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%d-%H%M")
    actual.export_data(f"actual_backup_{current_date}.zip")

Experimental features

[!CAUTION] Experimental features do not have all the testing necessary to ensure correctness in comparison to the files generated by the Javascript API. This means that this operations could in theory corrupt the data. Make sure you have backups of your data before trying any of those operations.

Bootstraping a new server and uploading a first file

The following script would generate a new empty budget on the Actual server, even if the server was not bootstrapped with an initial password.

from actual import Actual

with Actual(base_url="http://localhost:5006", password="mypass", bootstrap=True) as actual:
    actual.create_budget("My budget")
    actual.upload_budget()

You will then have a freshly created new budget to use:

created-budget

If the encryption_password is set, the budget will additionally also be encrypted on the upload step to the server.

Updating transactions using Bank Sync

If you have either goCardless or simplefin integration configured, it is possible to update the transactions using just the Python API alone. This is because the actual queries to the third-party service are handled on the server, so the client does not have to do any custom API queries.

To sync your account, simply call the run_bank_sync method:

from actual import Actual

with Actual(base_url="http://localhost:5006", password="mypass") as actual:
    synchronized_transactions = actual.run_bank_sync()
    for transaction in synchronized_transactions:
        print(f"Added of modified {transaction}")
    # sync changes back to the server
    actual.commit()

Running rules

You can also automatically run rules using the library:

from actual import Actual

with Actual(base_url="http://localhost:5006", password="mypass", file="My budget") as actual:
    actual.run_rules()
    # sync changes back to the server
    actual.commit()

You can also manipulate the rules individually:

from actual import Actual
from actual.queries import get_ruleset, get_transactions

with Actual(base_url="http://localhost:5006", password="mypass", file="My budget") as actual:
    rs = get_ruleset(actual.session)
    transactions = get_transactions(actual.session)
    for rule in rs:
        for t in transactions:
            if rule.evaluate(t):
                print(f"Rule {rule} matches for {t}")

Understanding how Actual handles changes

The Actual budget is stored in a sqlite database hosted on the user's browser. This means all your data is fully local and can be encrypted with a local key, so that not even the server can read your statements.

The Actual Server is a way of only hosting files and changes. Since re-uploading the full database on every single change is too heavy, Actual only stores one state of the database and everything added by the user via frontend or via the APIs are individual changes on top of the "base database" stored on the server. This means that on every change, done locally, a SYNC request is sent to the server with a list of the following string parameters:

dataset: the name of the table where the change happened.
row: the row identifier for the entry that was added/update. This would be the primary key of the row (a uuid value)
column: the column that had the value changed
value: the new value. Since it's a string, the values are either prefixed by S: to denote a string, N: to denote a numeric value and 0: to denote a null value.

All individual column changes are computed on an insert, serialized with protobuf and sent to the server to be stored. Null values and server defaults are not required to be present in the SYNC message, unless a column is changed to null. If the file is encrypted, the protobuf content will also be encrypted, so that the server does not know what was changed.

New clients can use this individual changes to then sync their local copies and add the changes executed on other users. Whenever a SYNC request is done, the response will also contain changes that might have been done in other browsers, so that the user the retrieve the information and update its local copy.

But this also means that new users need to download a long list of changes, possibly making the initialization slow. Thankfully, user is also allowed to reset the sync. When doing a reset of the file via frontend, the browser is then resetting the file completely and clearing the list of changes. This would make sure all changes are actually stored in the database. This is done on the frontend under Settings > Reset sync, and causes the current file to be reset (removed from the server) and re-uploaded again, with all changes already in place.

This means that, when using this library to operate changes on the database, you have to make sure that either:

do a sync request is made using the actual.commit() method. This only handles pending operations that haven't yet been committed, generates a change list with them and posts them on the sync endpoint.
do a full re-upload of the database is done.

Contributing

The goal is to have more features implemented and tested on the Actual API. If you have ideas, comments, bug fixes or requests feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

bvanelli / actualpy

readme