Data Import Preview (Dry Run)

[kamioon-bot]

Support guidelines

• I've read the support guidelines
• My request is not listed as a very good idea, but unfortunately...
• I've used the search and this has not been requested before.

Description

When importing CSV data, it would be nice to be able to preview some of the transactions before submitting them to firefly.
The issue I ran into is that you are only able to see the import errors and warnings after you've agreed to submit them, by that point, it's too late to correct the errors.
I realize this might not be an issue for experienced users, but for first-time users who are getting familiar with how the data importer works, it would be a huge help to be able to see the errors before "saving" the transactions.

Basically, the functionality I'm suggesting is like "dry run" mode in a lot of command-line tools, where it pretends to do the thing and shows you results as if it did, but it doesn't actually do the thing.

Solution

I see two, potentially separate but related, features:

On the "Data Submission" page after the job is done and all errors or warnings are shown, only then can you click to "commit" or "save" the transactions. This gives the user the opportunity to start over if they see errors they were not expecting.
Add a preview button or just always show 10 unique transactions in tabular format above or below the other output. So the user can see the transactions that are about to be submitted.

What are alternatives?

Existing option is to submit the job, cross your fingers and hope it goes well. If it didn't work the way you hoped, then you have to go into the firefly GUI and manually delete the botched transactions.

Additional context

copied from here