Import by dragging and url to a collection

mronkko
I t would be usefull to be able to drag and drop urls from browser to Zotero collections and have the content of that URL then be imported as a Zotero item. This would have the following advantages:

1) Simplify filing citations. Instead of clicking on the export button and then dragging the article to a colelction in Zotero, the user would just need to drag and drop once from the browser address bar to a collection

2) Enable importing citations from RSS reader. Some people keep up with their favourite journals by subscribing to RSS feeds of these journals. Normally the feed contains links to article pages of databases that Zotero can import from. Now the work flow to book mark these articles is to first click on the link, then click on the import button, and then file the article in a colelction. It would improve usability to just be able to drag the link from RSS reader to a collection.

There are probably some other use cases for this as well.

Mikko
  • erazlogo
    edited March 5, 2009
    A related request: Would it be possible to add a feature to import references into Zotero automatically via an RSS subscription to a particular journal? I was showing Z yesterday and some people in the audience requested this.
  • dstillman
    Zotero already creates snapshots for dragged URLs. So to do what you're requesting, the behavior would probably have to be the following:

    1) If dragging a URL over an existing regular item, create a child snapshot.

    2) If dragging a URL to a collection or the top level of the items pane, load the target page in the background and determine if there's a translator for it. If there is, save via the translator. If not, perform the equivalent of Create New Item from Current Page, with a child snapshot optionally created according to the standard snapshot pref.

    This would also have the advantage of avoiding top-level snapshots, which are awkward and confusing.
  • dstillman
    Elena: It's an interesting idea, but would there still be a need for it if it were possible to drag in links directly from feeds and have proper items be created? What's the use case for automatic adding? Also, can you provide some examples of such feeds?
  • bdarcus
    edited March 5, 2009
    Good questions Dan.

    As for an example, here's one:

    http://api.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/anti/latest?format=rss
  • erazlogo
    edited March 5, 2009
    It's an interesting idea, but would there still be a need for it if it were possible to drag in links directly from feeds and have proper items be created? What's the use case for automatic adding?
    It wasn't my request but I imagine one use case would be if a scholar expected to need every single article of a specialized journal, i.e. a Joyce scholar downloading everything from European Joyce Studies--here is the RSS (same db as Bruce's example above):

    http://api.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/ejs/latest?format=rss

    Instead of getting an email from Ingenta and then dragging 2-3 articles manually, the researcher would see all of them in Z upon opening, automatically downloaded.
  • mronkko
    "
    2) If dragging a URL to a collection or the top level of the items pane, load the target page in the background and determine if there's a translator for it. If there is, save via the translator. If not, perform the equivalent of Create New Item from Current Page, with a child snapshot optionally created according to the standard snapshot pref.
    "

    This is exactly what I meant.

    Mikko
  • CB
    An ancillary benefit of the OP's request here is that someone could run Firefox with a minimal profile *exclusively* as a Zotero container, and use a different browser of their choice for everything else (including finding the refs to drop into Zotero).

    This might help divert some of the "why won't you develop Zotero for X" whinges.
  • mronkko
    I did some studying of the code and came to the conclusion that this probably would not be too hard to implement.

    One approach would be to do following
    1) Capture the drag and drop event in collection. If it is text or link (types text/uri-list text/plain text/x-moz-url are probably sufficient), check that it is a http or https link. If it is not a link, exit the event handler.
    2) Open the link in a new background tab and open the URL there
    3) When the page has finished loading, call detectTranslators to see if the page can be imported. If no, then show an error message and exit the event handler
    4) Call scrapeThisPage to store the page
    5) Close the tab


    The problem is that I do not know how the drag and drop is implemented and currently do not have the time to study the issue. Also although the code of Zotero is clear, the documentation is bit lacking and this slows down learning how the system is built.

    Mikko
  • mronkko
    This seems to be somewhat related effort

    http://groups.google.com/group/zotero-dev/browse_thread/thread/b985e2285568e351#

    Mikko
  • dstillman
    Ticket created.
  • mronkko
    It seems that I cannot comment on the ticket in trac, so I will do so here.

    There is one additional thing that could be considered. Many journals that provide RSS feeds use the feed link as a landing page that redirects the user to the actual journal page. This feature would be more useful if Zotero would follow these redirects before scarping the page.

    Mikko
  • dstillman
    Example?
  • mronkko
    This link comes from an RSS feed.

    http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=35385879&site=ehost-live

    And if you have the authentication cookie stored, it redirects to

    http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=108&sid=f5b4f9e2-b612-42e3-a724-4b39a1903caf%40sessionmgr109&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh&AN=35387050#db=buh&AN=35387050

    Mikko
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