A utility to produce HTML web pages, showing a family tree, from a GEDCOM format file.
This utility allows the user to produce HTML web pages, showing a family tree, from a GEDCOM format file.
An example can be browsed here: https://jonathanduke.github.io/gedcom-website-builder/sample/
It produces trees for up to 4 level-1 persons, e.g. the user’s grandparents. These level-1 persons are identified by their surname only, to protect their privacy in case they are still living. Other persons are shown with surname, forename(s) and year of birth.
Where a person has associated documents, the name has a hyperlink to a documents index page, listing the documents, and each document name has a hyperlink to a page showing an image of the document.
Each tree page shows the level-1 person with their parents (level-2), grandparents (level-3) and great-grandparents (level-4), where known.
Where the level-4 person has known ancestors, a hyperlink is provided to take the user to the next level tree which starts with the level-4 person.
Each tree page has hyperlinks to the top-level of the other 3 trees.
- This utility needs the ged_lib.py and params.txt files in the gedcom-file-processor repository to function:
mklink ged_lib.py ..\gedcom-file-processor\ged_lib.py
mklink params.txt ..\gedcom-file-processor\params.txt
The main module. This module presents the user with a Windows user interface, allowing them to edit parameters, process a GEDCOM format file or build the website.
Parameters used in the gedcom-website-builder utility are:
- GED File: The name of the GEDCOM format file to be processed. The file should be in the location where the utility runs.
- Website Path: Set to the full path of the folder to contain the web pages and containing an ‘images’ folder containing document images, e.g. if images are in C:\website\images, set this parameter to C:\website. Note: each document image must have a filename with the name and date of birth of an individual in the report, e.g. the filename of an image of the Birth Index Register document for Mary Jane Swales, born in 1885, should be ‘Swales, Mary Jane b. 1885 – BIR.jpg’. BIR is an image type. See ImageTypes.txt.
- Person1: The ID of the 1st person in the 1st family tree to be built
- Person2: The ID of the 1st person in the 2nd family tree to be built
- Person3: The ID of the 1st person in the 3rd family tree to be built
- Person4: The ID of the 1st person in the 4th family tree to be built
See the gedcom-file-processor utility for information on this module.
This module contains the create_tree subroutine that builds the website based on the parameters and information in Individuals.txt, Families.txt and Children.txt.
create_ tree calls write_tree_page for each of the persons defined in params.
write_tree_page creates a ‘persons’ list then calls add_person 15 times, once for each position on the tree page. Each time it passes the number of the person to be added (e.g. Person 2), and the number of the person that the person is a parent of (e.g. Person 1), and whether the person is the father or mother. Persons are arranged on the page in the following way:
Person 4
Person 3
Person 5
Person 2
Person 7
Person 6
Person 8
Person 1
Person 11
Person 10
Person 12
Person 9
Person 14
Person 13
Person 15
write_tree_page then removes the forenames and year of birth from the person’s details if the person is at the top-level of the tree.
It then creates an HTML file to show the tree page. The filename is ‘Tree’ followed by the level and names of the first person, e.g. ‘Tree4 Hunter, John.html’. It then writes spaces, connecting lines, person names and year of birts and links to the next level tree from the top of the page to the bottom, i.e. Person 4, then Person 3 etc. Spaces and connecting lines are written via subroutine calls. Person names are written using the write_person subroutine.
It then writes the hyperlinks to the 4 top-level trees, then closes the file.
If person 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14 or 15 has a next level tree, write_tree_page is called for each individual, to create the tree.
add_person adds a person to the ‘persons’ list. If the person being added is person 1 (passed as a parameter), a dummy entry is first added and the new entry is created with the individual ID passed as a parameter. If the person being added is person 2-15, the new entry is created with the father or mother of the person that is in the child person record (passed as a parameter). The ‘persons’ record is populated with the individual’s ID, name, date of birth, a ‘more’ indicator saying if the individual has a known parent and a ‘link’ indicator saying if a list of documents relating to the individual exists.
write_person writes the person’s name and birth year (both passed as parameters) to the open HTML file. This includes a hyperlink if the person has an associated document list (‘link’ indicator passed as a parameter). If a link to the next level tree is required (‘more’ indicator passed as a parameter), the link is written.
This module processes the document image files in the \images folder within the website folder identified in params.
It first reads the list of document types from File_Type_Order.txt into a ‘file_type_order’ list.
It then scans the ‘images’ folder for jpg files, and for each one it obtains the sort order from the ‘file_type_order’ list and writes the individual’s name, order and file type to a ‘records’ list.
It then sorts the ‘records’ list and then iterates through the sorted list. When a new individual is found or the end of the list is reached it closes the previously opened HTML file showing the list of documents (if any). It then opens a new one for the new individual and writes the header information including the individual’s name. An example file name is ‘List Hunter, Horace b. 1884.html’
It then writes the document type, including a hyperlink to the HTML file displaying the document.
It then opens and writes the HTML file displaying the document. An example file name is ‘Doc Hunter, Horace b. 1884 - BIR.html’