how to programatically interface with zotero

CitationUser · May 14, 2021

i am looking forward to connect to Zotero client using my Text editor. It would be nice if someone can give me a pointer how to get started.

I found this site explaining the [http interface](https://github.com/zotero/zotero-connectors) but it also seems there are some 3rd party projects available. Is there a Python library for Zotero? I am planning to write a client in Python.

Also, apart from saving items are we able to request the data from items? I couldn't find respective methods for these actions. I am mainly interested in fetching a list of items for autocompletion.

emilianoeheyns · May 15, 2021

There's a public API for synced data (https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/web_api/v3/start), there's the network protocol that LibreOffice uses to talk to the Zotero app (https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/libreoffice_plugin_wire_protocol), and there's the HTTP server in the app that can be used (BBT has a few web-APIs that work with this, https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/exporting/json-rpc/).

WRT python, you can use pyzotero (https://pypi.org/project/Pyzotero/) to talk to the public API for synced data. For direct access there's something like pyzottk (https://github.com/sbrisard/pyzottk), but that will only work when Zotero is not running, as Zotero locks the DB while it runs.