Here is a second version of an information extraction and validation working prototypethat I updated that people can download and fiddle with. This version loads and validates one XBRL-based filing at a time and uses a form to select the filing. I loaded this with public companies that use the "COMID-BSC-CF1-ISM-IEMIB-OILY-SPEC6" reporting style only.
NOTE!!! I originally created this Excel based application in 2013. It does not use the most current metadata for the mapping rules and the impute rules. You can find the most current rules here for the COMID-BSC-CF1-ISM-IEMIB-OILY-SPEC6 reporting style. Here are the rules for MOST reporting style.
Keep in mind that I am not a programmer, so I am not really proud of the code. But, this is a REALLY good example of how to validate and extract information from an XBRL-based financial report.
Here is the other information extraction and validation toolthat I made available a week or so ago. That works with the "INTBX-BSU-CF1-ISS-IEMIX-OILN" reporting style. Here is the most current rules for that reporting style.
So how do you know what reporting style a public company uses? Well, you can probe the filing and figure it out that way. That is advanced. In the mean while, you can simply read this REST interface. Here is the human readable format: COMID-BSC-CF1-ISM-IEMIB-OILY-SPEC6 and INTBX-BSU-CF1-ISS-IEMIX-OILN.
If you go to the LEFT hand side you will see a number with a LINK. Click on the link and you will see this. That is a REST interface that will supply you with the reporting style code for all public companies that currently file with the SEC.
A great way to understand how XBRL-based financial reports really work is to reverse engineer one of these two prototypes. An even better way is to rip out the hard-coded rules and replace them with the XBRL-based metadata referenced above and make the tools more dynamic.
Why is any of this important??? Read page 16 through 18 in this document where it talks about CLIPS. You may even want to just read the entire document.