## Working with Tag Paths

The section about Gedcom has explained the model of the information handled by GenJ. The supported entities (e.g. Individuals) are like records of information wrapping values in a hierarchical way. Every entity is identified by an id and GenJ will render entities for you in several places.

If an id identifies an entity then how can one of its properties be clearly identified? The answer is with Tag Paths. Let's look at an example:

>      0 INDI @I001@
>        1 NAME Nils /Meier/
>        1 SEX M
>        1 BIRT
>          2 DATE 25 May 1970
>          2 PLAC Rendsburg, Germany
>        1 RESI
>          2 DATE FROM Sep 2001
>          2 ADDR 788 Harrison St
>            3 CITY San Francisco
>            3 POST 94107
>        1 NOTE @N003@

To identify one property in this tree of information one has to start at the root INDI and then work to a node of interest like NAME. Note how every node starts with a tag identifying the type of property contained (e.g. SEX or DATE). These are Gedcom standard abbreviations. If one appends the tags encountered separated by ':' the result is the Tag Path INDI:NAME.

Here is a full list of possible Tag Paths for this Individual:

- INDI
- INDI:NAME
- INDI:SEX
- INDI:BIRT
- INDI:BIRT:DATE
- INDI:BIRT:PLAC
- INDI:RESI
- INDI:RESI:DATE
- INDI:RESI:ADDR
- INDI:RESI:CITY
- INDI:RESI:POST
- INDI:NOTE

Most of the time only some of these paths will be of use depending on whether there's interest for the property's value of the last node. The easiest case of where these paths come into play is the Table View