Export Bibliography from Command Line

baggiponte

Hello! This might be quite niche, but since I mainly interact with my laptop using the Shell/Terminal Emulator, I was wondering if there was a way to export a bibliography (perhaps even a specific library) from Zotero directly to a .bib file. like so:

$ zotero dump "My Library" > references.bib

or:

$ zotero dump "My Library/path/to/my/project" > references.bib

If not, how could it be implemented?

adamsmith

Nothing easy. Zotero just isn't set up to expose it's functionality not the command line.
You could do the above relatively easy via web API or you could see if https://github.com/sailist/pyzotero-local works for your purpose

baggiponte

So a command that connects to the web API could do the dump? i.e., this could only happen online and not on the Zotero app? (side note: when I use the Zotero Connector Chromium-based plugin, I cannot choose the library I want to save the items to when I do not use the Zotero Desktop app)

adamsmith

The command line version is easiest from the web API.
But if you just want auto updating bibtex files, I'd look at the better bibtex add-on for Zotero, which will be much faster and more convenient.

And yes, the connector principally interacts with the local client, so web import works better and has more functionality, including collection selection and tagging

baggiponte

Thank you! Mh, I have installed better bibtex, how do I enable the auto updating?

EDIT: Found here https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/exporting/auto/

emilianoeheyns

Since you have BBT installed, you can also do pull exports as an alternative.