Atom Feed URL

rcaputi

Why is it that when I click on the "Subscribe to this feed" button I do not get a URL, instead it takes me to a page asking me to create a new private key? And nothing I seem to do on that page gives me a URL. All I want to do is upload a library to a website and I need the Atom Feed URL. How can I get it?

adamsmith

You need the key for the website to have access to your non-public library; it will be part of the atom feed URL. The atom feed URL should appear after you click "Save Key" -- does it not?

rcaputi

Nope, it doesn't. I've tried it with two different browsers. I'm not sure what the problem is.

adamsmith

is this for your whole library or a specific collection/tag?

rcaputi

I wanted it to be for a specific collection, but I can't figure it out in either case.

adamsmith

This should work -- maybe try with other browser add-ons disabled, but for what it's worth, here's how to construct the atom URL.
If you look at a collection online you'll see a URL like this
https://www.zotero.org/rcaputi/items/collectionKey/[collection_key]

where the [collection_key] is an eight character alphanumeric string.

For the atom URL this turns into

https://api.zotero.org/users/4712185/collections/[collection_key]/items/top?start=0&limit=25&format=atom&v=1&key=[api_key]

where 4712185 is particular to your account (you can see it when hovering over your username here), [collection_key] is as above, and [api_key] is the API key you generate (make sure it's actually saving/generating, though, by clicking on manage keys.

rcaputi

Ok, I think I was able to generate the API key, but I'm not sure where you're seeing a collection key.

fcheslack

Sorry about that. If you try again now it should prompt you to create a key, then redirect you to the feed after you do.

rcaputi

No, it doesn't. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, I'm not sure. I click the "subscribe to this feed" button, which directs me to the "create a new private key" form, which produces a HTML file. At no point in this do I see a URL anywhere

adamsmith

The URL is just in the address bar, unless in I am misunderstanding what you see

dstillman

It depends on the browser. Chrome will display the XML, so you can look in the address bar. Firefox no longer supports feed reading but also doesn't display it inline, so it tries to download the XML as a file, which prevents you from seeing the URL.

rcaputi

I see a https://www.zotero.org/. . . and not a https://api.zotero.org/ . . . as you were explaining above.

dstillman

See my explanation above. Assuming you're using Firefox, try in a different browser.

(We should really start just displaying the URL in a popup with a copy link rather than displaying it directly.)

rcaputi

OK, it worked with Chrome. So thanks for that. But now I can't find the API key again.

adamsmith

If you have the URL, you don't need to look up the API key (though it's the last bit of the URL). You can see all of your API keys here: https://www.zotero.org/settings/keys

rcaputi

Hey all, I think I got it all. Thanks for your advice and patience.