(en) Negi: The Multiverse
When I don’t have an idea for a hobby project, I always default to an expense tracking app. Designing the database has always been fun. It starts so simple (just expense and income tracking) but it can go a bit complex (multiple account types, different currencies, transfers between accounts, categorized monthly statistics) and even have optional challenges to tackle if you’re a little crazy in the head (optimizing total balance calculation for if data gets in the millions, file import/export schematics, offline-first syncing).
My GitHub is chock full of these kind of repositories, though most are unfinished (and private, because it’s embarrassing). The one that worked (and I used it myself for a pretty long while back in 2018-2020!) is negi3002. Since then, other Negis are born in hopes to supercede that Negi, but none reached usable status.
Fun fact: the name Negi is taken from one of Filthy Frank Show’s character.
Now I’m back, but with a fresh spin on the idea. Every single iteration has mostly been the same monolithic approach: an app that handles the creation and management of the transactions database and serves a custom web-based UI for the users to view and manipulate data with. This time, I’m planning on doing some kind of microservices approach.
The data will be kept on Google Sheets. Yes! An Excel file as a database. So corporate. So 2010. But it’s gonna be great, methinks! I got this idea from working with Directus back at my previous job. It’s so nice to have a database engine that comes with a pre-made GUI.
So as you might have guessed, I am using Google Cloud’s API to write new transactions from my program directly to that Sheet. And as you might have guessed, I will be having more than one program that does that, since this is a microservices (plural) approach after all.
The first one is an email parser. Since I’ve got my own mail server now, I’m forwarding all my “payment notification” emails to this account, and then have my program read them. It’ll parse details like amount and transaction date and logging them via the Sheets API.
My last hobby project, decatholac Mango (dM), also mainly does parsing. I think I may have a parsing fetish?
The second one is a minimal web UI. It’ll act as a simple form for me to log transactions that can’t be tracked via mail history, such as cash payments. Honestly if possible I’d rather use the Google Spreadsheets app, but it’s heavy and cumbersome on mobile. I’ll make something light and PWA-able so that I can pin it on my phone’s home screen and boot it up fast.
Third and last one is a notifier. Since dM has a Discord bot running, I’m planning on spinning up another one and have it send me stats on how much money I spent daily / weekly / monthly and how reckless I have been with my budget. Thanks again for being such an accommodating platform, Discord.
And that’s what I got planned, anyway. At last the first half is kinda done; I’ll try to work on the web UI and notifier bot while fixing quirks along the way. I’ll update again after it finishes! If it ever does, anyway.