betty 0.2.6

Betty is a static ancestry site generator.

Betty 👵

Betty is a static site generator for Gramps and GEDCOM family trees.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Usage
  • The command line
  • Configuration files
  • Translations
  • Gramps
  • GEDCOM files
  • The Python API
  • Docker
• Development
• Contributions
• License

Features

Betty generates generates a static site from your genealogy records. This means that once your site has been generated, you will not need any special software to publish it. It's fast and secure.

• Builds pages for people, places, events, and media.
• Renders interactive maps.
• Fully multilingual: localize the site to one or more languages of your choice.
• Responsive, and mobile- and touch-friendly interface.
• Privacy and anonymization filters for living people.
• View an example.

Installation

Requirements

• Python 3.6+
• Node.js 10+ (optional)
• Linux, Mac OS, or Windows. On Windows you are encouraged to use Python 3.6, 3.7, or 3.8, because one of Betty's dependencies (libsass) cannot be installed automatically when using Python 3.9.

Instructions

Run pip install betty to install the latest stable release.

To install the latest development version, run pip install git+https://github.com/bartfeenstra/betty.git. If you want the latest source code, read the development documentation.

Usage

The command line

After installation, Betty can be used via the betty command:

Usage: betty [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  -c, --configuration TEXT  The path to a Betty site configuration file.
                            Defaults to betty.json|yaml|yml in the current
                            working directory. This will make additional
                            commands available.

  --version                 Show the version and exit.
  --help                    Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  clear-caches  Clear all caches.
  demo          Explore a demonstration site.
  generate      Generate a static site.
  serve         Serve a generated site.

Configuration files

Configuration files are written in YAML (*.yaml or *.yml) or JSON (*.json):

output: /var/www/betty
base_url: https://ancestry.example.com
root_path: /betty
clean_urls: true
title: Betty's ancestry
author: Bart Feenstra
lifetime_threshold: 125
locales:
  - locale: en-US
    alias: en
  - locale: nl
assets_directory_path: ./resources
plugins:
  betty.plugin.anonymizer.Anonymizer: ~
  betty.plugin.cleaner.Cleaner: ~
  betty.plugin.deriver.Deriver: ~
  betty.plugin.gramps.Gramps:
    file: ./gramps.gpkg
  betty.plugin.maps.Maps: ~
  betty.plugin.nginx.Nginx:
    www_directory_path: /var/www/betty
    https: true
  betty.plugin.privatizer.Privatizer: ~
  betty.plugin.trees.Trees: ~
  betty.plugin.wikipedia.Wikipedia: ~

• output (required); The path to the directory in which to place the generated site.

• base_url (required); The absolute, public URL at which the site will be published.

• root_path (optional); The relative path under the public URL at which the site will be published.

• clean_urls (optional); A boolean indicating whether to use clean URLs, e.g. /path instead of /path/index.html.

• content_negotiation (optional, defaults to false): Enables dynamic content negotiation, but requires a web server that supports it. Also see the betty.plugin.nginx.Nginx plugin. This implies clean_urls.

• title (optional); The site's title.

• author (optional); The site's author and copyright holder.

• lifetime_threshold (optional); The number of years people are expected to live at most, e.g. after which they're presumed to have died. Defaults to 125.

• locales (optional); An array of locales, each of which is an object with the following keys:

  • locale(required): An IETF BCP 47 language tag.
  • alias (optional): A shorthand alias to use instead of the full language tag, such as when rendering URLs.

  If no locales are defined, Betty defaults to US English.

• assets_directory_path (optional); The path to a directory containing overrides for any of Betty's assets.

• plugins (optional): The plugins to enable. Keys are plugin names, and values are objects containing each plugin's configuration.

  • betty.plugin.anonymizer.Anonymizer: Removes personal information from private people. Configuration: ~.
  • betty.plugin.cleaner.Cleaner: Removes data (events, media, etc.) that have no relation to any people. Configuration: ~.
  • betty.extension.demo.Demo: Loads demonstrative content and functionality that shows what Betty can do. Configuration: ~.
  • betty.plugin.deriver.Deriver: Extends ancestries by deriving facts from existing information. Configuration: ~.
  • betty.plugin.gramps.Gramps: Parses a Gramps genealogy. Configuration:
    • file: the path to the Gramps XML or Gramps XML Package file.
  • betty.plugin.maps.Maps: Renders interactive maps using Leaflet.
  • betty.plugin.nginx.Nginx: Creates an nginx configuration file and Dockerfile in the output directory. If content_negotiation is enabled. You must make sure the nginx Lua module is enabled, and CONE's cone.lua can be found by putting it in nginx's lua_package_path. This is done automatically when using the Dockerfile. Configuration:
    • www_directory_path (optional): The public www directory where Betty will be deployed. Defaults to www inside the output directory.
    • https (optional): Whether or not nginx will be serving Betty over HTTPS. Most upstream nginx servers will want to have this disabled, so the downstream server can terminate SSL and communicate over HTTP 2 instead. Defaults to true if the base URL specifies HTTPS, or false otherwise.
  • betty.plugin.privatizer.Privatizer: Marks living people private. Configuration: ~.
  • betty.plugin.trees.Trees: Renders interactive ancestry trees using Cytoscape.js.
  • betty.plugin.wikipedia.Wikipedia: Lets templates and other plugins retrieve complementary Wikipedia entries.

Translations

Betty ships with the following translations:

• US English (en-US)
• Dutch (nl-NL)
• French (fr-FR)
• Ukrainian (uk)

Plugins and sites can override these translations, or provide translations for additional locales.

Gramps

Privacy

Gramps has limited built-in support for people's privacy. To fully control privacy for people, as well as events, files, sources, and citations, add a betty:privacy attribute to any of these types, with a value of private to explicitly declare the data always private or public to declare the data always public. Any other value will leave the privacy undecided, as well as person records marked public using Gramps' built-in privacy selector. In such cases, the betty.plugin.privatizer.Privatizer may decide if the data is public or private.

Dates

For unknown date parts, set those to all zeroes and Betty will ignore them. For instance, 0000-12-31 will be parsed as "December 31", and 1970-01-00 as "January, 1970".

Event types

Betty supports the following custom Gramps event types:

• Correspondence
• Funeral
• Missing
• Will

Event roles

Betty supports the following custom Gramps event roles:

• Beneficiary

Order & priority

The order of lists of data, or the priority of individual bits of data, can be automatically determined by Betty in multiple different ways, such as by matching dates, or locales. When not enough details are available, or in case of ambiguity, the original order is preserved. If only a single item must be retrieved from the list, this will be the first item, optionally after sorting.

For example, if a place has multiple names (which may be historical or translations), Betty may try to filter names by the given locale and date, and then indiscriminately pick the first one of the remaining names to display as the canonical name.

Tips:

• If you want one item to have priority over another, it should come before the other in a list (e.g. be higher up).
• Items with more specific or complete data, such as locales or dates, should come before items with less specific or complete data. However, items without dates at all are considered current and not historical.
• Unofficial names or nicknames, should generally be put at the end of lists.

GEDCOM files

To build a site from your GEDCOM files:

1. Install and launch Gramps
2. Create a new family tree
3. Import your GEDCOM file under Family Trees > Import...
4. Export your family tree under Family Trees > Export...
5. As output format, choose one of the Gramps XML options
6. Follow the documentation to configure your Betty site to parse the exported file

The Python API

from betty.config import Configuration
from betty.asyncio import sync
from betty.generate import generate
from betty.parse import parse
from betty.site import Site

@sync
async def generate():
    output_directory_path = '/var/www/betty'
    url = 'https://betty.example.com'
    configuration = Configuration(output_directory_path, url)
    async with Site(configuration) as site:
        await parse(site)
        await generate(site)

Docker

The betty.plugin.nginx.Nginx plugin generates ./nginx/Dockerfile inside your Betty site's output directory. This image includes all dependencies needed to serve your Betty site over HTTP (port 80).

To run Betty using this Docker image, configure the plugin as follows:

# ...
plugins:
    betty.plugin.nginx.Nginx:
        www_directory_path: /var/www/betty/
        https: false

Then generate your site, and when starting the container based on the generated image, mount ./nginx/nginx.conf and ./www from the output directory to /etc/nginx/conf.d/betty.conf and /var/www/betty respectively.

You can choose to mount the container's port 80 to a port on your host machine, or set up a load balancer to proxy traffic to the container.

HTTPS/SSL

The Docker image does not currently support secure connections (read more). For HTTPS support, you will have to set up a separate web server to terminate SSL, and forward all traffic to the container over HTTP.

Development

First, fork and clone the repository, and navigate to its root directory.

Requirements

• The installation requirements documented earlier.
• Node.js
• Docker
• Bash (you're all good if which bash outputs a path in your terminal)

Installation

In any existing Python environment, run ./bin/build-dev.

Working on translations

To add a new translation, run ./bin/init-translation $locale where $locale is a IETF BCP 47, but using underscores instead of dashes (nl_NL instead of nl-NL).

After making changes to the translatable strings in the source code, run ./bin/extract-translatables.

Testing

In any existing Python environment, run ./bin/test.

Fixing problems automatically

In any existing Python environment, run ./bin/fix.

Contributions 🥳

Betty is Free and Open Source Software. As such you are welcome to report bugs or submit improvements.

Copyright & license

Betty is copyright Bart Feenstra and contributors, and released under the GNU General Public License, Version 3. In short, that means you are free to use Betty, but if you distribute Betty yourself, you must do so under the exact same license, provide that license, and make your source code available.