Persons

Persons have three key attributes: gender, names, and facts.

Gender is a required attribute. Three gender types are supported:

• http://gedcomx.org/Male
• http://gedcomx.org/Female
• http://gedcomx.org/Unknown

Names and Facts are discussed at length in other documents. Refer to those documents for details about the behavior of both names and facts.

Minimum Requirements for Creating a Person

All that is required to create a person is a name, a gender, and a living/deceased declaration.

{
  "persons": [
    {
      "living": true,
      "gender": {
        "type": "http://gedcomx.org/Male"
      },
      "names": [
        {
          "type": "http://gedcomx.org/BirthName",
          "preferred": true,
          "nameForms": [
            {
              "fullText": "Jacob",
              "parts": [
                {
                  "value": "Jacob",
                  "type": "http://gedcomx.org/Given"
                }
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Updating a Person

When updating a person, send information only about what is new; the entire person resource is not needed. For example, to add a birth event to someone, send this:

{
  "persons": [
    {
      "facts": [
        {
          "type": "http://gedcomx.org/Birth",
          "date": {
            "original": "3 Apr 1836",
            "formal": "+1836"
          },
          "place": {
            "original": "Kirtland, Geauga, Ohio"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Normalized and Standardized Dates and Places

• See Dates Guide
• See Places Guide

Living or Deceased?

Persons are declared living or deceased. To declare a person as deceased, you must either set the living property to false or provide a http://gedcomx.org/Death.

For the operations in the following table, the required property values are indicated (X indicates required).

Examples

1. A person is living.

2. A write is sent to add a burial event. The back-end fails because the person is not declared as deceased.

3. A person is deceased and has a cremation conclusion.

4. A write is sent to make the person living. The back-end fails because a cremation conclusion exists.