Transaction Reference Number is not returned by the parser

[denisld]

The Transaction object does not contain the mandatory SWIFT Transaction Reference Number (Tag :20:). It only includes the field called 'bank_reference', which appears to be extracted from the section with Tag :61:. These two numbers are not the same, and I would imagine many users require at least the Tag 20 entry.

[wolph]

There should be a transaction_reference available for a :20::

mt940/mt940/tags.py

Line 135 in 2b8b865

pattern = r'(?P<transaction_reference>.{0,16})'

We can see an example with this sta file here:

mt940/mt940_tests/self-provided/transaction_details_wrapped.sta

Line 2 in 2b8b865

:20:STARTUMSE

Which generates this data:

mt940/mt940_tests/self-provided/transaction_details_wrapped.yml

Line 24 in 2b8b865

transaction_reference: STARTUMSE

Do you have a specific example where this is not working?

[mmdevl]

You can find the transaction reference as follow:

transactions = mt940.parse('test.sta')
print(transactions.data['transaction_reference'])

But for instance my bank exports several transaction references at the same time (one for each account). And with the print above you would get only the last transaction reference.

Try with this example:

:20:STARTUMSE
:25:12345678/1020304050
:28C:00000/001
:60F:C160229EUR1200,00
:61:1602300301DR6,00N024NONREF
:86:805?00ENTGELTABSCHLUSS?106666?20Pauschalen?3012345678?1122334
45566?602017-01-01T13
:12:11
:62F:C160301EUR1194,00
:20:STARTUMSE2
:25:12345678/1020304050
:28C:00000/001
:60F:C160229EUR1200,00
:61:1602300301DR6,00N024NONREF
:86:805?00ENTGELTABSCHLUSS?106666?20Pauschalen?3012345678?1122334
45566?602017-01-01T13
:12:11
:62F:C160301EUR1194,00

I think this is a bug and I see 2 solutions:

1. add a 'transaction_reference' key to every transaction objects or
2. group the objects by 'transaction_reference'

[wolph]

You're right. For some files this is indeed not a usable situation. Option 2 is quite involved so I've opted for adding a transformer to take care of option 1. I'm still finalizing the code so the tests keep on working without issues but the current develop branch shows the new behaviour.

[wolph]

The new release is online. Every transaction should have the relevant transaction_reference now. If you want to add more fields you can do so using the post processors:

mt940/mt940/models.py

Lines 264 to 267 in 026859d

	post_statement=[
	processors.date_cleanup_post_processor,
	processors.transactions_to_transaction('transaction_reference'),
	],

[aGitForEveryone]

Amazing fix! This same issue happens when a single mt940 file contains transactions for several bank accounts. The account_identification field in transactions.data would have the value of the last tag 25. So it was impossible to track after transaction parsing what bank account the transaction belonged to.

I implemented a more complex workaround to separate the transactions per bank account. But with this post processor, it's possible to include that information in the transaction data itself. So the parsing becomes much easier.

Now don't forget that the global transactions.data gets overwritten with each new transaction, otherwise this feature doesn't work anymore.