API call for RTF scan, extensions

jurgen.strydom

A great feature would be to enable calling the RTFscan or extentions (e.g. RTF/ODFscan) through the API to allow others to utilise this functionality programatically.

I'm trying to use this feature to automatically build my reports from markdown to odf (through the use of pandoc), but I cannot find a way to automate the RTFscan portion of the process.

adamsmith

I'll reply here instead of on my blog since this is more likely to find an audience.
Currently, the local client doesn't have much of an API that's accessible from the commandline at all. The tools are built in a way that would require pretty much rebuilding them to work server side.

@fbennett originally wrote ODF scan as a python script, so that may still be available somewhere?

But stepping back, if you're writing in markdown anyway, why don't you use pandoc's built in citation feature? You can hook that into Zotero pretty easily, especially together with the better bibtex extension.

fbennett

(It looks like I don't have a copy old Python code for ODF conversion. We've had bug fixes since the jump to JavaScript though, so it's probably just as well that it's no longer in circulation.)

jurgen.strydom

@adamsmith, thank you for your reply. I had no idea pandoc had this feature! I was mainly following the workflow from https://github.com/RaoOfPhysics/phd-starter-kit/blob/gh-pages/index.md, so I assumed using RTFscan was the only approach to take. Silly me. The next question would be if there is an API approach to export the library to a pandoc supported format (from the pandoc website this seems to be bibtex). I'll do a search and see if I can come up with an answer.

Thank you for taking the time to guide me in the right direction, much appreciated!

adamsmith

look at the better bibtex add-on, which has functionality to automate this without the need even for an API call.
https://github.com/ZotPlus/zotero-better-bibtex

(Depending on where you write your markdown, there's even Atom integration)