Export to bibtex with a script

JasonFriedman · March 14, 2008

I have tagged items according to projects I am working on, and I would like a way to automatically extract these items to a bibtex file. I know that I can select these items, and then click on export, but it would be very useful to me to be able to do this via a script or some other automatic way. Any ideas about how to do this?

[EDIT: See last post - I found a solution]

Tjowens · March 20, 2008

If you are using a Mac you might give George Mackerron's bibdesk extension a try see http://mackerron.com/

amat · April 14, 2008

I'm looking for such a feature, too. I would like to run zoteros bibtex export from
a makefile. How complex would it be to achieve that?

dstillman · April 14, 2008

Amat: There's not really any way to trigger internal Zotero functionality from outside Firefox at the moment. We eventually hope to create an API for external applications to use (and/or the ability to use command-line flags to Firefox to trigger Zotero operations), but nothing like that exists at the moment.

If you wanted to rig something up, you could create a Zotero plugin that listens on a particular port, triggers a BibTeX export, and returns the result (for example as a SOAP response). This is how the word processor plugins work. Providing access to the full Zotero data layer would be a much more complicated proposition, but for a specialized task like yours it would be relatively simple to create such a tool.

afalon · April 15, 2008

Hi together,

I am also interested in a bibtex export. And if needed I'd be even open for implementing such an export myself...

Is there anything in the queue - since tex/bibtex is quite commonly used in the natural science domains (formulas are nowhere as nice and easy as in latex ;) ) this would possibly boost accepance of the zotero-plugin.

Cheers, afalon

dstillman · April 15, 2008

afalon: Zotero already supports exporting to BibTeX. This thread is about automating the process.

JasonFriedman · December 31, 2008

Now to finally answer my own thread, I found a solution to this problem, using MozRepl (a command line interface to Firefox) which seems to be working nicely. I have detailed the solution here:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/jxf35/zoterotobibtex.html

dstillman · December 31, 2008

Yes, MozRepl works well (we use it for some things internally but weren't aware of it when you first posted), and it probably obviates the need for the API for external applications that I mentioned above.

Regarding the first citation key problem mentioned on your page, a citation key field is likely to be added to Zotero that will allow imported keys to be preserved and exported.