Gramps 3.0 Wiki Manual - Command Line

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Command line reference

Command line reference

This appendix provides the reference to the command line capabilities available when launching GRAMPS from the terminal.

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Note

GRAMPS was designed to be an interactive program. Therefore it uses graphical display and cannot run from the true non-graphical console. It would take an enormous amount of effort to enable it to run in a text-only terminal. This is why the set of command line options does not aim to completely get rid of dependency on the graphical display. Rather, it merely makes certain (typical) tasks more convenient. It also allows one to execute these tasks from the scripts. However, the graphical display must be accessible at all times!

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Tip

To summarize, the use of the command line options provides non-interactive behavior, but does not get rid of graphical display dependency. Take it or leave it!


Available options

This section provides the reference list of all command line options available in GRAMPS. If you want to know more than just a list of options, see next sections: Operation and Examples.

Format options

The format of any file destined for opening, importing, or exporting can be specified with the

-f format

option. The acceptable format values are listed below.

  • grdb GRAMPS database: This format is available for opening, import, and export. When not specified, it can be guessed if the filename ends with .grdb
  • gramps-xml GRAMPS XML database: This format is available for opening, import, and export. When not specified, it can be guessed if the filename ends with .gramps
  • gedcom GEDCOM file: This format is available for opening, import, and export. When not specified, it can be guessed if the filename ends with .ged
  • gramps-pkg GRAMPS package: This format is available for import and export. When not specified, it can be guessed if the filename ends with .gpkg
  • geneweb GeneWeb file: This format is available for import and export. When not specified, it can be guessed if the filename ends with .gw
  • wft Web Family Tree: This format is available for export only. When not specified, it can be guessed if the filename ends with .wft
  • iso CD image: This format is available for export only. It must always be specified explicitly.

Opening options

There are two ways to give GRAMPS the name of the file to be opened:

supply bare file name

use the -O filename or -open=filename option

If the filename is given without any option flag, the attempt to open the file will be made, and then the interactive GRAMPS session will be launched.

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Tip

If no option is given, just the file name, GRAMPS will ignore the rest of the command line arguments. Use the -O flag to open the file and do something with the data.


The format can be specified with the -f format or --format=format option, immediately following the filename . If not specified, the guess will be attempted based on the filename .

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Tip

Only grdb, gramps-xml, and gedcom formats can be opened directly. For other formats, you will need to use the import option which will set up the empty database and then import data into it.


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Tip

Only a single file can be opened. If you need to combine data from several sources, you will need to use the import option.


Import options

The files destined for import can be specified with the -i filename or --import=filename option. The format can be specified with the -f format or --format=format option, immediately following the filename . If not specified, the guess will be attempted based on the filename .

Tip:

More than one file can be imported in one command. If this is the case, GRAMPS will incorporate the data from the next file into the database available at the moment.

When more than one input file is given, each has to be preceded by -i flag. The files are imported in the specified order, i.e. -i file1 -i file2 and -i file2 -i file1 might produce different GRAMPS IDs in the resulting database.

Export options

The files destined for export can be specified with the -o filename or --output=filename option. The format can be specified with the -f option immediately following the filename . If not specified, the guess will be attempted based on the filename . For iso format, the filename is actually the name of directory the GRAMPS database will be written into. For grdb, gramps-xml, gedcom, wft, geneweb, and gramps-pkg, the filename is the name of the resulting file.

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Exporting more files

More than one file can be exported in one command. If this is the case, GRAMPS will attempt to write several files using the data from the database available at the moment.


When more than one output file is given, each has to be preceded by -o flag. The files are written one by one, in the specified order.

Action options

The action to perform on the imported data can be specified with the -a action or --action=action option. This is done after all imports are successfully completed.

Currently available actions are:

  • summary: This action is the same as Reports ->View ->Summary
  • check: This action is the same as Tools ->Database Processing ->Check and Repair .
  • report: This action allows producing reports from the command line. As reports generally have many options of their own, this action should be followed by the report option string. The string is given using the -p option_string or --options=option_string option.
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Report option string

The report option string should satisfy the following conditions:It must not contain any spaces. If some arguments need to include spaces, the string should be enclosed with quotation marks. Option string must list pairs of option names and values. Within a pair, option name and value must be separated by the equal sign. Different pairs must be separated by commas.


Most of the report options are specific for every report. However, there some common options.

  • name=report_name: This mandatory option determines which report will be generated. If the supplied report_name does not correspond to any available report, the error message will be printed followed by the list of available reports.
  • show=all: This will produce the list of names for all options available for a given report.
  • show=option_name: This will print the description of the functionality supplied by the option_name, as well as what are the acceptable types and values for this option.

Use the above options to find out everything about a given report.

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Tip

If an option is not supplied, the last used value will be used. If this report has never been generated before, then the value from last generated report will be used when applicable. Otherwise, the default value will be used.


When more than one output action is given, each has to be preceded by -a flag. The actions are performed one by one, in the specified order.

Operation

If the first argument on the command line does not start with dash (i.e. no flag), GRAMPS will attempt to open the file with the name given by the first argument and start interactive session, ignoring the rest of the command line arguments.

If the -O flag is given, then GRAMPS will try opening the supplied file name and then work with that data, as instructed by the further command line parameters.

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Note

Only one file can be opened in a single invocation of GRAMPS. If you need to get data from multiple sources, use the importing options by using -i flag.

With or without the -O flag, there could be multiple imports, exports, and actions specified further on the command line by using -i , -o , and -a flags.

The order of -i , -o , or -a options with respect to each does not matter. The actual execution order always is: all imports (if any) -> all exports (if any) -> all actions (if any).

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Note

But opening must always be first!

If no -O or -i option is given, GRAMPS will launch its main window and start the usual interactive session with the empty database, since there is no data to process, anyway.

If no -o or -a options are given, GRAMPS will launch its main window and start the usual interactive session with the database resulted from opening and all imports (if any). This database resides in the import_db.grdb file under the ~/.gramps/import/ directory.

Any errors encountered during import, export, or action, will be either dumped to stdout (if these are exceptions handled by GRAMPS) or to stderr (if these are not handled). Use usual shell redirections of stdout and stderr to save messages and errors in files.

Examples

  • To import four databases (whose formats can be determined from their names) and then check the resulting database for errors, one may type:
gramps -i file1.ged -i file2.gpkg -i ~/db3.gramps -i file4.wft -a check
  • To explicitly specify the formats in the above example, append filenames with appropriate -f options:
gramps -i file1.ged -f gedcom -i file2.gpkg -f gramps-pkg -i ~/db3.gramps -f gramps-xml -i file4.wft -f wft -a check
  • To record the database resulting from all imports, supply -o flag (use -f if the filename does not allow GRAMPS to guess the format):
gramps -i file1.ged -i file2.gpkg -o ~/new-package -f gramps-pkg
  • To save any error messages of the above example into files outfile and errfile, run:
gramps -i file1.ged -i file2.dpkg -o ~/new-package -f gramps-pkg >outfile 2>errfile 
  • To import three databases and start interactive GRAMPS session with the result:
gramps -i file1.ged -i file2.gpkg -i ~/db3.gramps 
  • To open a database and, based on that data, generate timeline report in PDF format putting the output into the my_timeline.pdf file:
gramps -O file.grdb -a report -p name=timeline,off=pdf,of=my_timeline.pdf 
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Timeline report options


  • Finally, to start normal interactive session type:
gramps 
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