# Command line reference

This appendix provides the reference to the command line capabilities available when launching &app; from the terminal.

&app; 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!

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 &app;. If you want to know more than just a list of options, see next sections: and .

### 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

  &app; 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

  &app; 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

  &app; package. This format is available for import and export. When not specified, it can be guessed if the filename ends with .gpkg

geneweb

  GeneWen 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 &app; 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 &app; session will be launched.

If no option is given, just the file name, &app; 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`.

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.

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`.

More than one file can be imported in one command. If this is the case, &app; 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 &app; database will be written into. For grdb, gramps-xml, gedcom, wft, geneweb, and gramps-pkg, the `filename` is the name of the resulting file.

More than one file can be exported in one command. If this is the case, &app; 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.

  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.

  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.

&cmdplug;

## Operation

- If the first argument on the command line does not start with dash (i.e. no flag), &app; 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 &app; will try opening the supplied file name and then work with that data, as instructed by the further command line parameters.

  Only one file can be opened in a single invocation of &app;. 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).

  But opening must always be first!

- If no `-O` or `-i` option is given, &app; 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, &app; 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 &app;) or 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 &app; 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 &app; 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`

  Use the name=timeline,show=all to find out about all available options for the timeline report. To find out details of a particular option, use show=option_name, e.g. name=timeline,show=off string.

  To learn about available report names, use name=show string.

Finally, to start normal interactive session type:

  `gramps`