iTunesStoreLog.pl

Collecting iTunes receipts since 2009

tl;dr

How much money have you spend in the iTunes Store? This Perl hack collects all email receipts you received from the iTunes Store and summarizes your expenses in a time series.

More details

Going through your mail receipts is a more reliable way to monitor your expenses than the method of the well-done App Store Expense Monitor: You really get the actual amount of money you spent on the store based ony the actual receipts sent to you. It should work with German and English receipts and the currencies Euro, Swiss Francs and Dollars.

Screenshot

Sourcecode

Download script

Author

Stephan

E-Mail: mail@ping13.net
Twitter: ping13

Feel free to contact me, if you have any questions or feedback.

Dependencies

• You need an IMAP enabled email address (such as Google Mail) and have your iTunes receipts collected in one folder (or label as with Google Mail).
  • If you're using Googlemail, you can setup a filter which matches from:(do_not_reply@apple.com) subject:(Ihre Belegnummer) (for German receipts) to collect your receipts in a folder.
• You need a Perl installation with lots of modules: Net::IMAP::Simple::SSL, Email::Simple, DateTime::Format::DateParse and YAML). CPAN is your friend.
• The resulting HTML file uses the Javascript library Timeplot. You need an internet connection to show the timeseries plot.

Usage

1. Satisfy all the above dependencies.

2. Setup a YAML file and fill in the details, see sample. Specify your IMAP server, username and password, the name of the IMAP folder and the path where the HTML file and the datafile should be stored.

3. Run the script perl iTunesStoreLog.pl sample.yml. You may have to wait a while until everything is set.

4. Look at the generated HTML file /path/for/html/and/datafile/index.html and wonder where your money has gone.

5. If you want to have the HTML file updated regularly, put an appropriate entry in your crontab (or similar). Running daily should suffice.

FAQ

• I don't know how to install Perl modules. What can I do?
  • Use CPAN on your machine. You're out of luck, if you're not familiar with the command line. This script is probably only for geeks.
• I don't have an IMAP mailbox. Does it work anyhow?
  • Nope, sorry. This is only a quick hack. Feel free to adjust it to your needs, though.
• Is there any other way to get my real expenses on the iTunes Store?
  • Obviously you could use iTunes :-). Check your account settings for details.

License

Copyright (C) 2009, mail@ping13.net

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Comments? Feedback?