gedcom

Go package to parse and produce GEDCOM files.

Purpose

The gedcom package provides tools for working with GEDCOM files in Go. GEDCOM (Genealogical Data Communication) is a standard format used for exchanging genealogical data between software applications. This package includes functionality for both parsing existing GEDCOM files and generating new ones.

The package includes a streaming decoder for reading GEDCOM files and an encoder for creating GEDCOM files from Go structs.

Usage

The package provides a Decoder with a single Decode method that returns a Gedcom struct. Use the NewDecoder method to create a new decoder.

This example shows how to parse a GEDCOM file and list all the individuals. In this example the entire input file is read into memory, but the decoder is streaming so it should be able to deal with very large files: just pass an appropriate Reader.

package main

import (
	"bytes"
	"github.com/iand/gedcom"
	"io/ioutil"
)

func main() {
	data, _ := ioutil.ReadFile("testdata/kennedy.ged")

	d := gedcom.NewDecoder(bytes.NewReader(data))

	g, _ := d.Decode()

	for _, rec := range g.Individual {
		if len(rec.Name) > 0 {
			println(rec.Name[0].Name)
		}			
	}
}

The structures produced by the Decoder are in types.go and correspond roughly 1:1 to the structures in the GEDCOM specification.

This package does not implement the entire GEDCOM specification, I'm still working on it. It's about 80% complete which is enough for about 99% of GEDCOM files. It has not been extensively tested with non-ASCII character sets nor with pathological cases such as the GEDCOM 5.5 Torture Test Files.

Using the Encoder

In addition to decoding GEDCOM files, this package also provides an Encoder for generating GEDCOM files from the structs in types.go. You can create an encoder using the NewEncoder method, which writes to an io.Writer.

To see an example of how to use the encoder, refer to encoder_example.go. This example illustrates how to create individual and family records, populate them with data, and encode them into a valid GEDCOM file.

You can run the example using the following command:

go run encoder_example.go

Installation

Simply run

Run the following in the directory containing your project's go.mod file:

go get github.com/iand/gedcom@latest

Documentation is at https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/iand/gedcom

Authors

• Ian Davis

Contributors

Contributing

• Do submit your changes as a pull request
• Do your best to adhere to the existing coding conventions and idioms.
• Do run go fmt on the code before committing
• Do feel free to add yourself to the CREDITS file and the corresponding Contributors list in the README.md. Alphabetical order applies.
• Don't touch the AUTHORS file. An existing author will add you if your contributions are significant enough.
• Do note that in order for any non-trivial changes to be merged (as a rule of thumb, additions larger than about 15 lines of code), an explicit Public Domain Dedication needs to be on record from you. Please include a copy of the statement found in the WAIVER file with your pull request

License

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. For more information, see http://unlicense.org/ or the accompanying UNLICENSE file.