Install libofx with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• ofx2qif
• ofxdump

Project history

The README says libofx began as Benoit Gregoire's end-of-degree project with the objective of adding OFX support to GnuCash. It was then made into a generic library so open-source financial software could share the same OFX parser.

The project was implemented from the OFX 1.6 specification and later grew support for OFX 2.0. Early NEWS entries show the library moving from an initial public release through a C-compatible interface, ofx2qif, OFC support, investment transaction handling, and callback-based parsing.

Later maintenance focused on the parts that matter to package users: malformed-file robustness, character encoding, DTD discovery, Direct Connect support through ofxconnect, CMake support, Windows build fixes, and memory-safety fixes.

Adoption history

libofx became infrastructure for open-source finance software. Its own README names GnuCash as the initial motivation, and later NEWS entries refer to GnuCash bugs, AqBanking integration, KDE-reported client UID support, and package-oriented fixes.

Package-manager adoption follows from that role: users install libofx directly for command-line converters such as ofxdump and ofx2qif, while desktop finance applications use it as a parser dependency.

How it is used

The package includes ofxdump, which prints what the library understands from an OFX response file, and ofx2qif, which converts OFX files to Quicken Interchange Format. The repository also includes ofxconnect as a sample and test application for OFX Direct Connect workflows.

Developers use libofx through a C-style interface even though the implementation is C++. The library flattens parts of the complex OFX data model into practical C data structures for transactions, accounts, balances, securities, and investment data.

Why package nerds care

libofx is package-nerd useful because it bridges proprietary banking-export formats and Unix finance tools. It lets a small command-line pipeline or a larger accounting application read OFX without embedding an entire financial application stack.

Its long NEWS file is also a catalog of why file-format libraries stay alive for decades: banks emit strange data, standards evolve, parsers hit malformed input, and downstream applications need compatibility fixes more than new features.

Timeline

• 2002: README copyright period begins and the README describes the project as originating from work to add OFX support to GnuCash.
• Early releases: NEWS records libofx 0.1 as the initial public release.
• 2007: NEWS records libofx 0.9.0 with version exports, DTD location support, encoding detection, Windows cross-compilation improvements, and OFX request API cleanup.
• 2017: NEWS records libofx 0.9.13 with heap-overflow and crash fixes.
• 2021: NEWS records libofx 0.10.0 with expanded investment and security handling.
• 2022: NEWS records libofx 0.10.6 adding CMake build-system support.

Related projects

• GnuCash is the initial application named by the README as the reason libofx was started.
• AqBanking appears in the NEWS file as a related finance-connectivity project affected by libofx API and request-header changes.
• OpenSP and OpenJADE are important parser dependencies discussed in the README because libofx uses OpenSP for SGML-style OFX parsing.
• QIF and OFC are adjacent finance interchange formats supported by libofx tools or historical parser work.

Sources

• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/libofx
• https://github.com/libofx/libofx
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libofx/libofx/master/ChangeLog
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libofx/libofx/master/NEWS
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libofx/libofx/master/README