PDFs do not import

yaelzr
Hello!
We had started a thread a few months ago trying to see why zotero will not attach the PDFs when importing citations.
Since then, I have a new hard drive and have reloaded both Zotero and Firefox anew; the same problems persist.
Here is a recent bug report:
The Debug ID is D354540524
which is for this reference:
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&id=0A249F5F-CB40-65F6-FF8F-CF206335C6FB&resultID=2&page=1&dbTab=all
the reference has a PDF link available on the same page, yet it does not import; i continue to have to drag and drop it separately (best case scenario).
Please help!
thanks,
Yael
  • mark
    That link is tied to your search session. Can you give one that will work for us, or tell us the title or DOI of the article?
  • adamsmith
    actually don't worry about that (though in general we need stable URLs or other ways to get to the paper like mark says):
    We never get PDFs from APApsycnet - I can see whether that's possible. I'm not sure I have access to the APA psycnet version, though, which would make this more complicated.
  • yaelzr
    Wait - so if I use psychinfo (which is the database on APA psycnet) to run my searches, i can never get any of the PDFs properly imported? This is a huge key database in the social sciences. Is there a solution to this access problem?
    this is the DOI in case it is still needed:10.1037/a0020280
  • adamsmith
    Wait - so if I use psychinfo (which is the database on APA psycnet) to run my searches, i can never get any of the PDFs properly imported?
    yes, that's currently the case. I can see what I can do - problem from my side is that many schools - including the two I have access to - don't subscribe to psycnet through APA - we get the same database through EBSCO.
  • mark
    edited June 20, 2012
    @adamsmith, here's the stable URL:
    http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/139/4/743.html

    It looks like this might be an easy translator to write/adapt: the PDF is available as a direct link, in this case http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/139/4/743.pdf (a one-step modification of the stable URL). If you update the translator to look there, I would be able to test it for you.
  • adamsmith
    edited June 20, 2012
    right, that looks feasible. I'd want to get the pdflink from the site, though, we don't always have the stable URL.

    In Firefox, could either of you right click on the link to the fulltext article, select "Inspect Element"
    and then click on "HTML" in the black bar on the bottom.
    You'll see the code of the webpage at that particular location.
    right-click on
    <ul id="rdtlLinkList">
    (if that's not there, something else with LinkList in it)
    and select "copy outer HTML" and copy the results here. It should look something like (but not exactly like) this:


    <ul id="rdtlLinkList">
    <li>Full text</li>
    <ul id="rdtlFulltext">
    <li class="rdPurchasePDF"><a href="/journals/neu/18/3/485.pdf" target="_blank"><span>Purchase PDF</span></a></li>
    </ul>
    <li><a href="/journals/neu/18/3/" target="_blank">Journal TOC</a></li>
    </ul>

    edit: the same is possible in Chrome - I don't know exactly how the respective functions are called, though.
  • mark
    edited June 20, 2012
    If you have access, the relevant bit of HTML looks like this:


    <ul id="ftThisDocument" class="ftMenuOptions">
    <li class="ftHTML">
    <span>FULL TEXT HTML</span>
    </li>
    <li class="ftPDF last" >
    <a href="/journals/xge/139/4/743.pdf" target="_blank"><span>FULL TEXT PDF</span></a>
    </li>
    </ul>
  • aurimas
    I think adamsmith and I are looking at a different page than you are. We are working with pages that look like http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/50/5/325/ where the PDF links should be on the right side in the "Links" panel. Could you post the HTML source for the PDF links on that page?

    The page you link to in the post above (http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/139/4/743.html) is somewhat different and I'm not so sure that the Zotero APA PsychNET translator even works there (though I don't have complete access to PsychNET, so it may be different for you). BTW, for the same item, http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/139/4/743/ is what the other page looks like.

    The page you link, however, _is_ where the DOI resolver takes you when following a DOI, so I think it might be important for Zotero to handle those pages as well. Unfortunately, there is no convenient way to do it. We can probably scrape info directly from the page. Or try to find the item Id.
  • mark
    edited September 28, 2012
    Okay. Now talking about http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/50/5/325/ , accessed from my institution. There are two relevant pieces of source code in the HTML:

    1.
    In the meta section of the HTML page there is the following helpful meta attribute giving you the absolute URL to the PDF:

    <meta name="citation_pdf_url" content="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/50/5/325.pdf" />


    2.
    And then there is the following piece of HTML that provides a relative URL:

    <h3>Links</h3>
    <div id="rdtLinks">
    <ul id="rdtlLinkList">
    <li>Full text</li>
    <ul id="rdtlFulltext">
    <li class="rdPDF"><a href="journals/xge/50/5/325.pdf" target="_blank"><span>PDF</span></a></li>
    </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="/journals/xge/50/5/" target="_blank">Journal TOC</a></li>
    </ul>
    </div>
  • adamsmith
    mark - could you give this a try?
    https://github.com/adam3smith/translators/blob/apa/APA%20PsycNET.js
    (I assume you know how to install a translator from github - if not let me know and I'll give you directions).
  • aurimas
    I wonder if the meta tag would be available from pages like http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/139/4/743.html

    It might be worthwhile to try and fetch pdf link from '//li[@class="rdPDF" or contains(@class,"ftPDF")][1]/a/@href' if we get nothing from meta
  • mark
    @adamsmith, sorry, I don't recall how to install from github.
  • mark
    @aurimas, nope, meta tag not available from that page.

    Only this:

    <li class="ftPDF last" ><a href="/journals/xge/139/4/743.pdf" target="_blank"><span>FULL TEXT PDF</span></a></li>
  • adamsmith
    mark - download the translator from this link
    https://github.com/adam3smith/translators/raw/apa/APA%20PsycNET.js
    (save link as...)
    and place it in the translator directory of your Zotero data folder:
    http://www.zotero.org/support/zotero_data
    overwriting the old translator of the same name (if you're not overwriting a translator, make sure to find and delete the old Psycnet translator).
    Reload the page and try if that downloads a PDF

    Try this on a page that looks like this
    http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/50/5/325/
    I'll add a little bit for the other type of pages later and ask you to test again.
  • mark
    Yep, this attached a PDF. Also attaches a snapshot though — why?
  • qenghis
    Hello, I've just started having a PDF import problem from ProQuest and also NYT archives.

    When I import a citation, I briefly see a PDF icon titled "Full Text PDF" under the new citation, but it disappears almost instantly. It's been happening on every attempt for the past few days, but here is one example: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/docview/173221843/13987F5ADAE3C46605A/1

    I'm using Zotero standalone 3.0.8 with Chrome 21.0.1180.90 on Mac 10.5.8.

    PS I also tried it with the Firefox plugin. It works correctly with FF.
  • adamsmith
    please start a new thread - in spite of the title, this one is about APA Psycnet only.
    PDF import is a one translator at a time issue, it's almost never a general problem.
  • qenghis
    Sorry, here's the new thread: http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/25596/standalone-failing-to-import-pdfs-proquest-nyt/
  • adamsmith
    The fix for APA is now up.
    Your copy of Zotero will auto-update within 24hs or you can update immediately from the General tab of the Zotero preferences.
    Any problems, please let us know.

    The translator will first try the metatag, then try to get the pdf from the right column on the page. If either of those are successful, it'll only attach the PDF - otherwise a Snapshot of the current page.

    @mark testing this on
    http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/50/5/325/ would be helpful
  • adamsmith
    I hear form some people that APA is working, so I'll regard this as fixed. Any further problems with APA Psycnet please post here.
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