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import/export GEDCOM files


As part of a project, I have to include the importing and exporting of GEDCOM files to be inserted/taken out of a database. I am finding it very hard to find how to write the files as there isn't really any tutorials on how they work. Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do? My project is to create a web application to draw family trees so I will be coding with javascript and PHP. Or if anyone knows any additional software that would help? Thank you.


Solution

  • Not sure if this meets the requirements for the project, but the easiest way would be to use a GEDCOM to JSON parser written in Java (it's on Github somewhere), and placing the output as-is in either MongoDB OR Postgres with JSON fields. If you do that you'll have an array of all people, an array of all families, etc that you can iterate through easily!

    I would recommend the D3 library for drawing trees. It's tough to learn (I'm still trying to grasp it), but there are examples on bl.ocks.org that you can try to understand or modify to fit your use case. I'm working on a similar project and that's where it's at right now, making the trees. Good luck !