Ideas for batch edit work around?

Ed Warga
Hi Zotero,

I'm working on creating a bibliography of about 1000 entries. There's a team pulling in citations from different sources. I'd like to batch edit these citations - normalize author names, publications, etc. My idea for doing this is to
1. pull the data from my collection using the api with format=json,
2. converting the json to csv,
3. editing in a spreadsheet
4. converting back to json,
5. writing changes to my collection via the api.

I'm having trouble converting back into the Zotero JSON format. I can get to step three with no problems, but trying to convert from CSV to JSON is not working out for me.

Does anyone have any insight about editing JSON records in a batch? Or is there any other way to write changes to the collection records besides using the JSON format? I appreciate any help.

Ed
  • zuphilip
    I think, that it might be easier, if you try to make the edits inside zotero: Normally, you are losing some information when you are doing import/export. Moreover, in your workflow you would need to perform a step like dublicate detection in the end. There are possibilities to perform batch edits with JavaScript cf. https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api#examplebatch_editing
  • Ed Warga
    Editing in Zotero seems inefficient. If I could do edits in a spreadsheet, I'd make more progress faster. I'm not planning to use import/export, rather the read/write functions of the API.
  • adamsmith
    what zuphilip is suggesting is to script the batch edits in javascript, not to make them in Zotero's own interface. Follow the link.

    There are, of course, also shell tools that can batch process JSON, as well as tools in most standard coding languages -- certainly in python and javascript -- though, again, you'd be looking at a scripting solution.
  • Ed Warga
    thank you adamsmith and zuphilip. I will look into the javascript solution.

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