User

The purpose of this guide is to familiarize partners with the User resource for working with user information in FamilySearch. Partners need to be able to read information about who contributed to the Family Tree. They also need to be able to read information about the current user, such as the current username or the location of the user in FamilySearch Family Tree.

The following are the different resources that apply to users in the system:

To get the profile of the current user, use the Current User resource.
To get the tree person that represents the current user, use the Current Tree Person resource.
To read the public profile data of any other agent, use the Agent resource.

Each user has two IDs. The first is the treeUserId, which is used in the FamilySearch Family Tree. The second is the userid which is used by everything else, such as sources, discussions, memories, etc. The treeUserId will eventually be replaced by the user ID.

Terms and Definitions

Term	Definition
user	An authenticated person who has logged in to FamilySearch.
agent	Someone or something who "acts" in the system, such as by reading or writing to the Tree.
contributor	A user who makes changes to the Tree.
well-known contributor	System identities such as Temple, CMIS, Data Admin, and Data Migration that make changes to the Tree.
current user	The user that is currently logged in to FamilySearch.
current person	The person in the Tree that represents the current user.

Read Current User

How to read the current user:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<fs:familysearch xmlns="http://gedcomx.org/v1/" xmlns:fs="http://familysearch.org/v1/" xmlns:atom=http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <fs:user id="cis.MMM.RX9">
    <link rel="self" href="https://familysearch.org/platform/users/current"/>
    <link rel="person" href="https://familysearch.org/platform/tree/personsJNM-VRQM"/>
    <fs:contactName>Pete Townsend</fs:contactName>
    <fs:email>[email protected]</fs:email>
    <fs:fullName>Pete Townsend</fs:fullName>
    <fs:personId>JNM-VRQM</fs:fullName>
    <fs:treeUserId>PXRQ-FMXT</fs:treeUserId>
  </fs:user>
</fs:familysearch>

Property	Description
user id	The ID of the current user. This is the FamilySearch account ID and identifies who has made changes to sources, discussions, memories, etc.
personId	The ID of the current person.
treeUserId	The Family Tree contributor ID. Family Tree uses this ID to identify the user and identify who has made changes to the Tree.

Read Agent

How to read a contributor:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<gedcomx xmlns="http://gedcomx.org/v1/" xmlns:fs="http://familysearch.org/v1/" xmlns:atom=http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <agent id="12345">
    <link rel="self" href="https://familysearch.org/platform/users/agent/12345"/>
    <account>
      <accountName>account</accountName>
    </account>
    <email resource="mailto:[email protected]"/>
    <name>John Smith</name>
  </agent>
</gedcomx>