Customize reports with XML tool

Families often have complicated structures, especially for Twenty-first century blended families. Generating reports that include the various relatives will yield a more complete picture of the family.

This article offers a less manual method to configure a Report's options as an alternative to the Gramps report interface.

Family Lines Graph

Creating a Family Lines Graph often involves carefully selecting multiple people to include, this is a slow process that recursively loads the Select Person dialog.

Gramps stores these selections in a file named report_options.xml in the ~/.gramps User directory. The report options are overwritten every time a graphical report is created.

It is possible to edit this file manually with a text editor, but that is a tedious and error-prone procedure.

Create a Bash script

The following bash script will take care of the process for Linux users. It includes backing up the current file and saving the list of Person IDs in a file that can be reused.

#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -lt 1 ];then
    echo "Utility to replace list of People of Interest in Gramps Family Lines Graph."
    echo "The file 'report_options.xml' is overwritten after making a backup."
    echo "The current list of People of Interest is saved for possible reuse" 
    echo "Usage: "$0" current_pid [new_pid]"
    echo "   current_pid is the file name in which to save current pid list"
    echo "   Optional. If present, new_pid is the name of the file containing"
    echo "   the new pid list"
    echo "   eg " $0" bigfamily.pid three_gen.pid"
    exit 1
fi 

gramps_home=~/.gramps/
#echo "gramps_home = "$gramps_home
opts=$gramps_home"report_options.xml"
#echo "opts = "$opts
bak=$opts".bak"
#echo "bak = "$bak

echo "Backing up "$opts " to " $bak 
cp -irp $opts $bak

echo "Saving current pid list to "$gramps_home$1
lxprintf -e 'module[@name="familylines_graph"]/option[@name="gidlist"]'\
 "%s\n" @value $opts > $gramps_home$1

echo "Replacing pids in "$opts
echo "    with the contents of "$gramps_home$2

# replacing the xml in situ does not seem to work correctly
# instead send it to a temporary file and copy
lxreplace -q \
  'module[@name="familylines_graph"]/option[@name="gidlist"]' \
  -@ '"value"' "'`cat $gramps_home$2`'" \
  ~/.gramps/report_options.xml > /tmp/temp.xml

cp -fv /tmp/temp.xml $opts 2>>/dev/null
echo "Updated "$opts

Using the script

Copy the this code into a file, or get the most recent version of the script from github, and save it to a directory on your PATH.

You will also need the LTXML2 Toolkit from the Language Technology Group at Edinburgh University.

See also

• 18 Mar 2021 Family Lines Graph message thread in the Gramps-users maillist archive