Family Tree Calendar

Turn the output of Gramps' Web Calendar report into clean, styled, mobile-friendly birthday and anniversary calendar pages for a family website.

The tool reads the plain HTML that Gramps' Web Calendar report writes to cal/<year>/1.html … 12.html and rewrites those twelve pages in a consistent house style — one page per month, with a month navigation bar, a year switcher, and historical events tucked behind a per-day toggle.

The language of the finished calendar is controlled by the script. English and Danish can be auto-detected from the Gramps export. Additional languages can be used by adding a language pack and selecting it explicitly with --sprog.

Why this exists

My own calendar gets its data from the full web-based version of the family tree. That report is relatively heavy to generate when the only purpose is to update the calendar, and some users may not have a full web family tree at all.

Gramps' lighter Web Calendar report provides the same day-by-day calendar data, so this tool uses that report instead. A full family-site rebuild is not necessary.

The two Gramps reports differ in a few details, including cell IDs, monthly file names, and whether person links are present. This tool is written specifically for Web Calendar output generated with Link to Narrative Web turned off.

Requirements

Gramps 5.2 or later
Python 3.6 or newer
No third-party Python packages — standard library only

Tested platforms

Tested with:

Gramps 6.0.8 on Windows 11

Included files

The release package contains:

webcal_kalender.py
sprog/de.json — example German language pack
LICENSE.txt
README.md
RELEASE_NOTES.md

Input: generating the source in Gramps

In Gramps, run:

Reports → Web Pages → Web Calendar

Use these settings:

Destination must end with cal.
Filter can be set to Entire Database or to your own filter.
Translation should be set to the language of the source calendar. The script can auto-detect this language, or you can override the output language later with --sprog.
Date format can be set to the format you normally use.
Set the year range to the current year plus the next year.
Turn Link to Narrative Web off. The calendar is standalone.

Gramps writes the result to:

…/cal/<year>/1.html … 12.html

Usage

Extract the release ZIP into the folder that contains the cal folder.

For the normal case, no arguments are needed:

python webcal_kalender.py

The script then:

builds the current year and the next year,
auto-detects English or Danish from the source,
rewrites the calendar pages in place, and
creates a self-updating index_kalender.html.

The generated calendar can be opened locally in a web browser.

Options

Option	Meaning
`--sti PATH`	Folder that contains `cal/` (default: current folder).
`--aar YEAR`	Base year = this year + next year (default: current year). Set it if Gramps' start year is not the current year.
`--sprog CODE`	Select a language code, e.g. `da`, `en`, or `de`. English and Danish can be auto-detected from `<html lang>`; other languages must be selected manually.
`--ud FOLDER`	Write the styled pages to `FOLDER/<year>` instead of rewriting them in place.
`--json`	Also write `kalender_data.json` for each year (for debugging).
`--no-index`	Do not write `index_kalender.html` (it is written by default).
`--dump-sprog`	Write the built-in language packs to `sprog/*.json` as templates, then exit.

Output

For each built year, the script writes the following files to cal/<year>/ (or to the folder selected with --ud):

1.html … 12.html — the twelve styled month pages
kalender.css — the shared stylesheet

It also writes one file in the site root (--sti):

index_kalender.html — a small redirect page that always sends visitors to the current month of the current year, falling back to the base year when needed. This gives the calendar one stable entry point.

What a day shows

Icon	Event	Info line
🎂	Birthday (living)	age, e.g. `72 years`
🕯️	Birthday (deceased)	`† <death date>`
✝	Anniversary of a death	`† <year of death>`
💍	Wedding anniversary	e.g. `59 year anniversary` or `married 62 years (until 1995)`

Living birthdays are shown directly on the day.

Historical events, such as deceased birthdays, deaths, and anniversaries, are collapsed behind a small +N ⭣ toggle so the calendar grid stays readable. They expand when the toggle is clicked.

Language

The script has built-in calendar language support for English (en) and Danish (da).

Auto-detection works only for English and Danish and uses the source file's <html lang="…">.
Other calendar languages must be selected manually with --sprog and require a matching language pack.
Terminal messages are shown in Danish when Danish is selected. For all other calendar languages, terminal messages are shown in English.

Adding a language

Place a sprog/<code>.json file next to the script. No code change is needed.

For example:

python webcal_kalender.py --dump-sprog
cp sprog/en.json sprog/de.json
# Translate the values in de.json
python webcal_kalender.py --sprog de

--dump-sprog writes the built-in English and Danish language packs as templates.

A language pack may be partial. Any missing key falls back to English.

The available keys are:

months, weekdays, title, page_title, years, legend_alive, legend_dead, legend_death, legend_wedding, legend_hint, toggle_title, wed_anniv, wed_married, wed_until, wed_word, couple_join, html_lang.

A German starter pack, de.json, is included as an example.

The event wording is rebuilt from numerical information in the source, such as ages, years married, and year of death. This allows that wording to follow the calendar's selected language.

Source dates still come from the Gramps export, so the source language and date format can matter when adding another language. For example, English Gramps writes ISO-style dates such as 2016-10-05, which are language-neutral and therefore convenient when building a third language from an English source.

Notes and gotchas

Match the source language and date format carefully when adding another language. A Danish source can contain Danish month names in dates, while an English source can use language-neutral ISO dates.
Old year folders are ignored. The script only looks at the current year and the next year. A leftover past-year folder is neither rebuilt nor linked. Delete it manually if it is no longer needed.
Missing year → clear error. If either target-year folder is missing, the script reports the problem in the selected language, tells you to generate the missing year in Gramps, and builds whatever is available.
Safe re-runs. If a run finds zero events — for example because it was pointed at already-styled files or the wrong folder — it refuses to write. This prevents a good calendar from being overwritten with an empty one.

Support

For questions and troubleshooting, see:

https://myown-project.dk/support/index.html

License

Released under the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later (GPL-2.0-or-later), the same license as Gramps.

Author

Henning — contact@myown-project.dk
https://myown-project.dk