Export to Bibliontology RDF failed (Error ID 624575963)

When I try to export my library to Bibliontology RDF, the green progress bar fills up as if it's all working, but afterwards I get a popup saying there was an error during export. However, the file I exported to does exist and it contains some entries.

In the browser console I see an error message about an item without creators, possibly triggering some sort of null pointer exception.

Exporting to Zotero RDF does work without any problem.

The error report ID is 624575963. Thanks for your efforts!
  • For others working on this:
    [JavaScript Error: "item.creators is undefined" {file: "[...]\ZoteroData\translators\Bibliontology RDF.js" line: 1088}]
  • I took some time to dive in and figure out that the error was thrown for items, well, without creators. The first item that failed to export was a top-level attachment.

    As a work-around, I added a check around the use of `item.creators` so that no creator nodes are added when there are no creators and the TypeError is not thrown.

    I just opened an issue on GitHub about this issue and work-around:
    https://github.com/zotero/translators/issues/1111
  • Thanks. I think this may be a problem in Zotero (though your solution obviously works as a stop gap). Every item should have item.creators, it'd just be an empty array (i.e. length=0) for items without creators, but I'd have to take a closer look.
    I have a vague recollection this has come up before.
  • It's been a while since I last tried to export, but now that I'm working on a different machine with a fresh installation of Zotero and translators, of course this comes back.

    Attachments apparently need not have creators (but they do have tags!). So it's a bug in the translator to either expect creators, or to export attachments without parents. I think attachments with parent items are not treated the same way.

    What do others think – is this a bug?
  • ah yes, that probably is the issue here -- we'd want to handle top-level attachments differently. Might be worthwhile looking at Zotero RDF and copy whatever that does. (I'm curious -- why are you using Bibliontology RDF? The format has never taken off and it might be something we'd consider deprecating in the future).
  • Thanks for thinking along! I'll look into it.

    As to why Bibliontology RDF, well, I thought I remember someone saying Zotero RDF was going to go away… Also, it may not have taken off but it is more standardised than Zotero RDF and I understand it better than Zotero RDF (which is also the only other RDF flavour currently provided).
  • but what are you using it for, specifically? It's not like regular Zotero usage requires RDF export of any kind. As we're expanding the available item types and fields in Zotero 5.1, maintaining all the current export translators is going to become rough. I'd like to understand use cases so either we can decided this is indeed still needed or we can make sure that suitable alternatives are in place if we're going to deprecate it.
  • (for reference, Simon's post on preferring Bibliontology over Zotero RDF is here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/131841/#Comment_131841 )
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