Ancestry APID tags and Reunion

[s1xc00k]

Hi,

I just wondered if anyone else is adding APID tags to their source citation details. The APID
tag is an internal value used by Ancestry.com and it is basically a database id number for a source (definition from Ancestry).

An advantage in doing this is that you can do all your research using Reunion, adding a _APID tag detail against each source citation; export the GEDCOM; run it an Apple script to adjust the GEDCOM file and when importing into Ancestry.com, the source citations are all linked to the original Ancestry source records. A disadvantage is it takes alot more effort and validating that the APID details are correct.

The format is _APID 1,<ID>::<Header #> where <ID> is a unique value for each Ancestry source record type and <Header #> is the header which can be extracted from the URL

Is anyone doing this?

Regards,
PC

[randy_godfrey]

Re: Ancestry APID tags and Reunion

Uh...no. At least I'm not doing that. It sounds interesting though. A tutorial for us novices may be needed. Where on Ancestry do you find these tags?

[s1xc00k]

Re: Ancestry APID tags and Reunion

Uh...no. At least I'm not doing that. It sounds interesting though. A tutorial for us novices may be needed. Where on Ancestry do you find these tags?

The APID tags are found in the GEDCOM file for Ancestry sources that have been saved in your tree. In Ancestry, click on Manage Tree and there is an Export Tree button to click (it takes afew seconds to generate and then you have an option to download the file). This saves a GEDCOM file (text file) which when opened contains the APID tags for each citation (i.e. search for _APID).

Ancestry to my knowledge use these tags internally in their web site and FTM software but the GEDCOM file you export, will show these (provided you have saved Ancestry sources).

For example, a residence event would look like this (some date and some address and source# would be specific to your research entry. The APID details would be specific to the Ancestry record for this research.

1 RESI
2 DATE Some date
2 PLAC Some address
2 SOUR @Source#@
3 PAGE Some date
3 _APID 1,1836::21884408

The format is 1, followed by a APID database tag (sounds complicated but each record collection in Ancestry has a separate tag ID number followed by 2 colons, followed by the header tag for your record. When you look at the URL for each Ancestry record, there is a long text but it has a h=, the number that follows is the header.

This information is keyed into Reunion. Once you know the Ancestry tag for one type of records, e.g. UK census 1911, you can use this for all 1911 census citation details with only the header part changing for each. The example above is the tag ID for NZ electoral roll information.

In the above example, the citation detail you would enter in Reunion would be 1969_APID 1,1836::21884413 and an applescript like the following, converts this to two lines (*).


(*
Change Ancestry tags to a _APID GEDCOM tag
*)
replace "_APID" using "
3 _APID" searching in text 1 of text document "whatever your GEDCOM filename is" options {search mode:literal, starting at top:true, wrap around:false, backwards:false, case sensitive:false, match words:false, extend selection:false}


To use Applescript with a GEDCOM, use a text editor like TextWrangler since it is scriptable. (*) The 3 _APID actually has a newline character (doesn't show up when I cut in pasted it in this reply, see photo of AppleScript below)

The end result is that when you export a GEDCOM from Reunion, run the applescript to split the _APID tags to a separate line in the file, upload this converted GEDCOM file back to Ancestry. Each of your citation details should show an Ancestry icon next to it to show that the citation points to an Ancestry source record. Clicking on the citation, would show the detail with an option to click on the Ancestry source.

It is an involved process taking abit of time. The attached photos show the end result in Ancestry and also, what the Reunion citation detail looks like for the example above. I use the same citation detail as Ancestry uses in its source citation, e.g. in the example, this is the year of the electoral roll.

Regards,
PC