familjs

FamilJS is an open-source JavaScript library intended for modeling and manipulating family data within web applications. It provides data models for individuals, families, and events, along with graph-style querying and data import/export capabilities suitable for genealogy and family-history projects.

Its core entities include Person, Family, and Event; relationships such as parent-child, marriage, and adoption; and a traversal API for exploring family graphs. The core engine is storage-agnostic and can be extended with adapters for local storage, IndexedDB, or remote back-ends. GEDCOM import and export support enables interoperability with established genealogy tools. The project emphasizes data validation, localization, and accessibility.

Developers can integrate FamilJS with modern front-end frameworks by pairing the core engine with UI layers such as React or Vue. The library ships with modular plugins for charts, timelines, and media associations, and provides a small, documented API for creating, updating, and querying entities.

FamilJS originated as an open-source project in the early 2020s, maintained by a community of contributors and released under an permissive license. Governance is typically community-led, with a core team handling releases, documentation, and security advisories.

Usage of FamilJS appears in hobbyist genealogy apps and educational tools that require flexible family graphs. Strengths include a clear data model and extensible architecture; potential drawbacks include complexity for simple use cases and the need for careful data privacy handling when dealing with sensitive information.