CSV export does not consider full hierarchy of categories

[tlnd]

In case of hierarchical categories, only the actual category and its parent are exported, instead of the full hierarchy of the categories. Consider an entry with a multi-level category like expenses/car/gas. The CSV export has a filed for 'category' and one for 'parent'. In this example the following values are exported: category=gas, parent=car. The information that 'car' is a subcategory of 'expenses' is lost.

In my opinion, there should only be one field that reflects the full hierarchy, like category=expense:car:gas. I think, the notation with colons as separator for subcategories or accounts is common in the field of financial software. And in case of a flat hierarchy there wouldn't be any colons to confuse anyone.

However, the current structure of the exported CSV file changes when discarding the parent field. To avoid this, I'd suggest the following compromise: Export the actual category in the field category but consider the hierarchy of the categories in the parent field. Thus the upper examples results in: category=gas, parent=expenses:car. This does not affect people who don't use hierarchical categories, but those who do can extract the full information from the exported data.

Would it be OK to change the structure of the CSV file or should it be preserved. I'd appreciate any comments on this and would do the coding.

[Denis Solonenko (denis-solonenko)]

Great catch! I suggest to follow your proposal to put full category path into 'parent' and the leaf into 'category'.