Full Diagram — webtrees Chart Module

A MyHeritage "Family View" style visualization for webtrees, showing direct ancestors and descendants as well as siblings and their spouses in a single interactive diagram.

Features

• Combined ancestor and descendant tree in one view
• Siblings and their spouses displayed alongside the main lineage
• Interactive SVG diagram with pan and zoom (D3.js + ELK layout)
• Configurable generation limits for ancestors and descendants
• Available as both a standalone chart and an individual-page tab
• Hover cards with summary information

How the Layout Works

The diagram is laid out using ELK (Eclipse Layout Kernel) and its layered (Sugiyama) algorithm. The family tree is modelled as a directed graph where each person is a node and couples are connected through small invisible "union" nodes. ELK's layered algorithm assigns each node to a horizontal layer (one per generation), minimises edge crossings between layers, and positions nodes to keep connecting edges short.

Spouses are fed into ELK as adjacent nodes with model-order constraints so they stay next to each other. After ELK computes X positions, Y coordinates are snapped to a strict generation grid and orthogonal bus-line connectors (couple bars, vertical drops, horizontal child rails) are drawn manually rather than relying on ELK's edge routing.

Requirements

• webtrees 2.2+
• PHP 8.2+

Installation

1. Download the latest release.
2. Extract it into the modules_v4/ directory of your webtrees installation so the structure is modules_v4/webtrees-full-diagram/module.php.
3. Go to Control panel > Modules > Charts and enable "Full Diagram".

Development

# Start the local dev environment (webtrees + MariaDB)
cd docker && docker compose up -d

# Install JS dependencies
npm install

# Build the JS bundle (watches for changes)
npm run watch

# One-off production build
npm run build

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.