Extend Genesis

Your guide to writing extensions for Genesis.

Genesis is a genealogy platform that can be extended in many different ways. Some of the ways you might want to extend it include, but are certainly not limited to:

• Import genealogical data from other data stores
• Export genealogical data to other data stores
• Additional search fields or search result columns
• Inference algorithms
• Data visualizations

[edit] Your Two Options

You have two options when it comes to extending Genesis. You can write a plug-in with Java, or you can script a plug-in using Javascript (or one of the other soon-to-be-supported languages such as Ruby). The former is the traditional approach to extending any application (like Genesis) based on Eclipse. The latter is a new approach pioneered by Genesis. There is potentially a third option which will be much easier than the former two, but will require some development, so I won't go into detail.

[edit] The Java Way

As already mentioned, the Java way is the traditional method of writing plug-ins for Genesis. Here's a simple tutorial to get you started:

1. Setting up the development environment
2. Writing a "Hello World!" plug-in
3. Turning that "Hello World!" plug-in into something a little more useful

[edit] The Scripting Way

The scripting way will allow you to write plug-ins for Genesis in Javascript (and eventually other scripting languages, such as Ruby).

• "Hello World!" Javascript plug-in
• "Goodbye, Cruel World!"
• Media Column