==QBFC-Ruby

QBFC-Ruby provides a wrapper around QuickBooks' QBFC COM object, while
allowing more or less direct access to the actual COM object.

Obviously, test before using on your production data...

==Find

QBFC-Ruby supports +find+ queries with options, which utitilize QBFC's Query
Requests. See QBFC::Element.find for details and options.

  QBFC::session do | qb |
    checks = qb.checks.find(:first, :conditions => {:entity => 'ABC Supplies'})
  end

==Relationships

QBFC-Ruby supports loading of related records. These are records
represented by "*Ref" in the QBFC documentation. For example, a Check
has, among others, a PayeeEntityRef and an AccountRef. These can be
accessed via, respectively, <tt>check.payee</tt> and <tt>check.account</tt>.

<tt>check.payee.name</tt> returns the name of the payee.

You can also access the *ID and Name fields of referenced records.
Example: for the payee of a Check, <tt>check.payee_id</tt> and
<tt>check.payee_name</tt>.

==General Examples

  # A very simple example, finding a single Customer by name
  QBFC::session do | qb |
    puts qb.customer('Customer Name').full_name
  end
  
  # Find all Customer, then return the first in the Array
  # Next, find the first Customer only
  QBFC::session do | qb |
    customers = qb.customers.find(:all)
    puts customers[0].full_name
    puts qb.customers.find(:first).full_name
  end

  # Same as previous, but not using a block  
  sess = QBFC::Session.new
  customers = QBFC::Customer.find(sess, :all)
  puts customers[0].full_name
  puts QBFC::Customer.find(sess, :first).full_name
  sess.close

  # Use a QBFC::Session object, but access the COM object
  # more directly.
  QBFC::session do | qb |
    request_set = qb.CreateMsgSetRequest("US", 6, 0)
    customer_query = request_set.AppendCustomerQueryRq	
    response = qb.DoRequests(request_set)
    customer_set = response.ResponseList[0]
    first_customer = customer_set.Detail[0]
    puts first_customer.full_name
  end
  
==Alternatives

[QuickBooks for Ruby]
  (docs: http://quickbooks.rubyforge.org,
  homepage: http://rubyforge.org/projects/quickbooks)

  This is a project with similar goals to QBFC-Ruby. I believe the approach
  is creating Ruby classes that mirror the QuickBooks types and generate / parse
  qbXML. In my opinion, this approach is more stable and flexible than what I'm
  doing with QBFC-Ruby, but at the cost of slower development. (As in, QBFC-Ruby
  was intended as a collection of quick and dirty shortcuts; QuickBooks for Ruby
  seems to be intended as a much more *complete* project)

[QBFC/qbXML COM Objects]
  Using the SDK directly is an option. Unless you need to use QBWC (QuickBooks
  Web Connector) or have some other reason for *wanting* to us qbXML, I suggest
  using QBFC. The SDK documents (see http://developer.intuit.com/ ) are pretty
  easy to use and navigate.

There are some other libraries on rubyforge in early stages which I haven't
really explored.

Copyright (c) 2008 Jared E. Morgan, released under the MIT license