Visibility of item key in Desktop and Web client?

Adspectus
When I am accessing an item via the API I need the item key. So far I could not find a way to make this key visible in the Desktop client (Linux) or on the Web client. Is there any posssibility to make it visible?

I assume this key is unique for each item and does not change over the life course, is that correct?
  • adamsmith
    What's the use case? You can't make it visible in the UI, but you can get it to the clipboard. Zutilo has shortcuts for Zotero://select and the item.uri For everything else you would need a custom translator
  • Adspectus
    Thanks a lot! I installed Zutilo and get what I was looking for. Use case is that I want to use the API on a web page to get and display individual items and for that I think I need the key.
  • czucz
    Actually, I would also be interested in having the itemKeys displayed in the UI. My use case is the following: some systematic review methods require a random sampling from a list of results. I am trying to set up a simple yet efficient workflow for that. This could be achieved in a reproducible way using a stable random number (or string) added to each record in my collection. As the item key is such a number, being able to display that string in the UI (and then sort the view according to that) would be an easy and robust solution for our sampling problem. What do you think of this? Or is there any other easy and recommended way to assign a random number to each item in a collection? Thanks.
  • adamsmith
    You can export to CSV, do the random selection in Excel (or any statistical software) and then construct a zotero://select link for all chosen items, e.g.
    In any case, this seems rather specialized, certainly not a reason to put the item key into the regular GUI.
  • czucz
    Yes, you are right, but this would immensely multiply the complexity of the process. As this is a qualitative systematic review, the sample will be extended iteratively several times, and in some steps even the collection may need to be expanded (with additional new searches). Furthermore it will not be just me or a single person performing the review in a single go, but the process will need to be transformed into step by step guidelines, and the repeated exporting and importing (=marking of selected items) cycles would create a huge overhead. Having a simple displayable and sortable random number/string among the UI fields would make all this way simpler and more elegant.
    I have no ideas what kind of problems/risks displaying the item keys as one of the optional displayable field would create, I proposed this as (maybe naively) I think that this could be something very easy to implement, with no downsides. (There are already 32 such selectable fields, so having a 33rd option to choose from would probably not disturb any of the users who don't really need this.)
    Alternatively, it would also be nice solution for my use case if there was opportunity to populate one of the "little used" displayable/sortable columns with a random number (or even better to have a dedicated column for a random number). This would make it possible for me to rely on zotero in a simple yet intuitive way in in our review workflow, without the need for an additional SR reference management software. (We would not be able to use most of the functionalities of any such software anyway, because they are not designed for qualitative SR.) Exporting csvs and then re-importing/marking the items does not really seem to be a feasible option now, because these repeated cycles of "bookkeeping operations" would overload our workflow which is already complex enough.
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