Understanding Synchronisation Options

bia49
Hello everyone,

I'd like to sync my Zotero library between the two computers I'm using for my research. However, I'm not fond of doing this over centralised infrastructure – my institution provides WebDAV storage and should I really need to I could install an internal web server with synchronisation software specific to Zotero as well.

To understand if this is supported and how synchronisation works, I have the following questions:

1) https://www.zotero.org/support/sync tells me I can use WebDAV, but I still have to log in with my Zotero account. Why? Is this used for metadata and only files are synced via WebDAV?

2) Does Zotero transmit settings, most importantly WebDAV login information, to its own servers when synchronisation is enabled?

3) Can I create my own Zotero synchronisation service based on https://github.com/zotero/dataserver ? What else would I need?

4) If 3) is possible at all, can I change the synchronisation server URL in a config file / SQLite database or would I have to recompile the entire client program?

I appreciate these are a lot of questions. Even if you can only answer some of them, I'll be very happy to get information about these topics. Thank you!
  • dstillman
    I still have to log in with my Zotero account. Why? Is this used for metadata and only files are synced via WebDAV?
    Yes.
    2) Does Zotero transmit settings, most importantly WebDAV login information, to its own servers when synchronisation is enabled?
    No. https://www.zotero.org/support/privacy
    3) Can I create my own Zotero synchronisation service based on https://github.com/zotero/dataserver ?
    Technically yes, and some places have. But it's not documented or easy and we don't provide any support for it (including for other issues in a Zotero client that's synced with another server).
    4) If 3) is possible at all, can I change the synchronisation server URL in a config file
    Yes, you can create extensions.zotero.api.url in the Config Editor. But then you're totally on your own.
  • dstillman
    edited November 14, 2022
    See also, for the reasons behind this: https://github.com/zotero/dataserver/issues/105#issuecomment-701854388
  • bia49
    Thank you for these answers! I understand it would be infeasible as of now to support this from your side. I'll see how far I can get :)
Sign In or Register to comment.