loopback-connector-quickbooks

This connector is currently under development and should not be used in production, get involved and help us speed up development by taking a look at the TODO section

The purpose of this connector is to act as the middle and end man in the process of communication to QuickBooks Web Connector used to communicate to QuickBooks Desktop software. Traditionally QuickBooks Web Connector requires a SOAP server to send and receive XML requests to view, create or update QuickBooks data. This connector has a built in SOAP server built in. The connector itself is responsible intaking a traditional RESTful API request, and using the SOAP service to communicate it to the QuickBooks Web Connector.

Thank you

Big thanks to johnballantyne. The built in SOAP service is based upon his implementation of Node.js QBWebConnector service with modifications to support dynamic queries.

Another big thanks goes to the creator of the project quickbooks-php, Keith Palmer from ConsoliBYTE, LLC. Without his guidance on an issue i had when implementing the Mod and Add operations i would have pulled my hair out and OD'd on coffee. The project quickbooks-php and their usage of schema files for validation was a key part to this connector

How it Works

Once you have installed the connector and added the datasource the rest is magic. Since QuickBooks data is not schemaless the connector is in charge of automatically building all required Loopback Models, meaning right out of the box once you serve up your API you will have access to Customers, UnitOfMeasureSets, Employees and many more (full list bellow). Upon serving your API all the data from QuickBooks will be available to query. You can use the reSync() method to ask QuickBooks for updated data.

Install connector from NPM

npm install loopback-connector-quickbooks --save

Configuring QuickBooks connector

Edit datasources.json and add:

 "quickbooksService": {
    "name": "quickbooksService",
    "connector": "loopback-connector-quickbooks",
    "username": "qbuser",
    "password": "pas***rd1234"
    "companyFile": "C:\\Users\\Public\\Documents\\Intuit\\QuickBooks\\Company Files\\NodeGeeks LLC.qbw",
    "enableServiceLog": true,
    "config": {
      "verbosity": 2
    }
  }

Settings:

• name: The name of the datasource must be quickbooksService
• username: Username used in the .QWC file created for your server
• password: Password set in QuickBooks Web Connector
• companyFile: Directory on your local machine where your QuickBooks company file is located
• enableServiceLog: Enabled debug logging, this coupled with the config.verbosity determines how deep logging is enabled

TODO

• Create tests for all 3 request ops (Query, Mod, Add) using Customer (QB List object) and Estimate (QB Transaction object). A complete test of every QuickBooks Object and Operations for those Objects should eventually be created.
• Cleanup code and add comments throughout the project to better document the code.
• Add dual QuickBooks API support, currently only Desktop is supported, the QB Online API should also be added.
• Currently the Employee Object extends User to allow for Employee login via Loopbacks User Model, a couple of things should be done when creating the Model, first ACL policies must be implemented, and second we need to automate the process in which they choose a password for there Employee record, thus also automating determining what permissions/roles that Employee may or may not have.
• Refactor QBWebService.reSync to support to determine if each index value in models param is a string for a simple query or if it is an object with a filter property that defines a more advanced query.

Because this is a Loopback Connector this project is to conform the coding style, commit message and terminology guidelines provided by Loopback

• Refactor to inherit Loopbacks Coding Style guidelines
• Create CONTRIBUTING.md file to set contributing guidelines and agreement

new todo's will be added periodically and until this is closed and this loopback-connector is marked ready for production.