I just want to clarify here that, if you're using Zotero's syncing functionality (and really even if you're not), you don't want to be making direct SQL changes as in crinne's example. You can accomplish the same thing via JavaScript, using Zotero's search and item saving functions, and the latter will properly update items so that they sync and do other things to ensure the integrity of the database.

I apologize if thread necromancy is frowned upon, but this thread seemed most relevant to the question I wanted to ask.

I recently imported an RIS file with italic information in some article titles in the format of {Icontents}, almost exclusively species names. If I had known this was there beforehand, I could have run a regular expression based substitution on the RIS to replace it with HTML tags before import, but now that it's in (and is several thousand items long, with several hundred with the italic tag), I would prefer a way to fix it directly in the database. The example code provided seems to be searching for an exact match.

In this case, however, I think I can get away with just searching for the initial "{I" -- does the following modification to Dan Stillman's code look sane? It's my first foray into Javascript, so I'm not completely sure of my syntax. What it should do is it apples a getField to the current item to retrieve the title as a string, runs a global regexp replacement on it changing {I } to HTML italics and saves it to newValue, then finally writes that modified string back in.

var fieldName = "title";
var oldValue = "{I";

var fieldID = Zotero.ItemFields.getID(fieldName);
var s = new Zotero.Search;
s.addCondition(fieldName, 'contains', oldValue);
var ids = s.search();
if (ids) {
	for each(var id in ids) {
		var item = Zotero.Items.get(id);
		var mappedFieldID = Zotero.ItemFields.getFieldIDFromTypeAndBase(item.itemTypeID, fieldName);
		var tempTitle = item.getField('title');
		var regExFilt = /\{I([A-Za-z .]+)\}/g;
		var newValue = tempTitle.replace(regExFilt, "<i>$1</i>");
		item.setField(mappedFieldID ? mappedFieldID : fieldID, newValue);
		item.save();
	}
	alert(ids.length + " items updated");
}
else {
	alert("No items found");
}

Everything went off perfectly, and the tags are now corrected. Thanks!

execute.js still works. What exactly are you using as code (and note that you need to select on open browser window for the code to run. That'd be the "Zotero is not defined" error.)

edit: FWIW, "for each" is deprecated, but it should still work and does for me.

Sounds like it's for some reason searching a group you belong to? That'd be the only reason I can think of for this.

Pretty sure this is what's happening. Is there some way to have the js search only the local library?

Ah, that did it. Thanks!

And for posterity, here's my script, which changes one field based on the value of another. I'm using it to insert journal abbreviations by journal name. Setting the two field names to the same thing should work just like the other version.


var checkFieldName = "[fieldname1]";
var targetFieldName = "[fieldname2]";
var searchValue = "Foo";
var replaceValue = "Bar";

var fieldID = Zotero.ItemFields.getID(checkFieldName);

var s = new Zotero.Search;
// Exclude group libraries
var groups = Zotero.Groups.getAll();
for (let group of groups) {
s.addCondition('libraryID', 'isNot', group.libraryID);
}


s.addCondition(checkFieldName, 'is', searchValue);
var ids = s.search();
if (ids) {
for each(var id in ids) {
var item = Zotero.Items.get(id);
var mappedFieldID = Zotero.ItemFields.getFieldIDFromTypeAndBase(item.itemTypeID, targetFieldName);
item.setField(mappedFieldID ? mappedFieldID : targetFieldName, replaceValue);
item.save();
}
alert(ids.length + " items updated");
}
else {
alert("No items found");
}

Instructions here: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api#batch_editing
(backup your library before)

Just change the first four lines ([fieldname1] [fieldname2] Foo Bar). The field names are here.

apologies - apologies - it worked after some changes !!

For future reference and clarity, I used the following first four lines of your code.

var checkFieldName = "publicationTitle";
var targetFieldName = "journalAbbreviation";
var searchValue = "The Journal of Chemical Physics";
var replaceValue = "J. Chem. Phys.";

Before I hadnt realised that the square brackets had to be removed.

Thanks again

thanks, yes, I did discover that. But I want to use Zotero to format references I can paste into multiple types of graphics, not just Word (which I try to avoid as much as possible). So I'd much prefer to have these in the library from the beginning.

I only just switched to Zotero from EndNote and although I am very impressed by many things I see now that there are some things I don't like. In particular I very much miss having a window where I can see the formatted bibliography entry in a style of my choice. Just looking at what you're about to paste across seems +very+ messy and clumsy in Zotero. Anyone know how to get Zotero to open a simple window giving you a choice of bibliography styles and a display??

I've played around with CustomButtons add-on in Firefox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/custom-buttons/

And also All-In-One Sidebar add-on which allows custom buttons to be positioned in vertical toolbar.

Then you can add calls to Zotero javascript API into a custom button.

You do need to get to grips with the javascript API however ..

https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api

and CustomButtons coding ..

http://custombuttons.sourceforge.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=2

For example I have a custom button which clears defined tags on selected items.

But .. its not clear what will be the future of such add-ons when Mozilla changes architecture and drops XUL support.

Building on some posts in this thread, I've written a script that works to search and replace on most fields, including creators (by parsing the creators object into JSON). It operates on the currently selected items, not the whole database.
You can paste the script into Tools->Developer->Run JavaScript and modify the first few lines of code to suit your needs.
The example standardizes my name to Penner, Ken M.
Improvements will be made to the version on GitHub at https://github.com/kmpenner/Zotero-replace

// For creators, the JSON looks like [{"fieldMode":0,"firstName":"Ken","lastName":"Penner","creatorTypeID":1}]
// so the regExFil should include the colon and double quotes like /"firstName":"Ken(neth)?( M\.)?","lastName":"Penner"/gm
// and the replaceText should be in single quotes and double quotes like '"firstName":"Ken M.","lastName":"Penner"'

var fieldName = "creator";
var regExFilt = /"firstName":"Ken(neth)?( M\.)?","lastName":"Penner"/gm;
var replaceText = '"firstName":"Ken M.","lastName":"Penner"';

var oldValue = "";
var changes = 0;
var fieldID = Zotero.ItemFields.getID(fieldName);
var items = Zotero.getActiveZoteroPane().getSelectedItems();

await Zotero.DB.executeTransaction(async function () {
for (let item of items) {
switch (fieldName) {
case "creator": oldValue = JSON.stringify(item.getCreators()); break;
default: oldValue = item.getField(fieldName);
}
newValue = oldValue.replace(regExFilt, replaceText);
if (newValue != oldValue) {
changes++;
switch (fieldName) {
case "creator":
item.setCreators(JSON.parse(newValue)); break;
default:
let mappedFieldID = Zotero.ItemFields.getFieldIDFromTypeAndBase(item.itemTypeID, fieldName);
item.setField(mappedFieldID ? mappedFieldID : fieldID, newValue);
}
await item.save();
}
}
});
return changes + " item(s) modified";

This is very much on the list of planned features -- my understanding is relatively close to the top -- but doing so in a way that's both flexible and usable enough for everyone and not likely to lead to total disasters when used incorrectly is not trivial.