@Rintze @fbennett CSL does have a keyword variable, so we could do this legally. It's not used in any style, afaik, so it wouldn't break anything. Any objections/thoughts? Frank, citeproc-js just expects a string there, I assume?

I think to customize this, you should be able to hook into the
doExport function: https://github.com/zotero/translators/blob/master/CSL JSON.js#L68

You already have the item (which contains item.tags) and you have the CSL JSON created by ZU.itemToCSLJSON(item), so you'd just need to add the tags into the JSON in the format you'd like (likely an array?) before pushing the item to the data array.

We can see if we'd want to modify the itemToCSLJSON function more generally -- that's my question above -- but a) that's going to take longer and b) it'd almost certainly include the tags as a (comma or semicolon delimited) string, which isn't ideal.

I'd have to test this myself, but my starting point would be something like
function doExport() {
var item, data = [];
while(item = Z.nextItem()) {
var itemJSON = ZU.itemToCSLJSON(item);
itemJSON = itemJSON.push(item.tags);
data.push(itemJSON);
}
Z.write(JSON.stringify(data, null, "\t"));
}

yeah, as I said, it was untested code, more designed as an outline than working code. I'm not going to have time to debug this, sorry. We can see what people say about putting the functionality in the upstream function.

Completely agree. We're working on a full JSON export in JSON-LD format based (mostly or entirely) on schema.org. No ETA, but hopefully going to happen first half of this year.

It partly works! But it returns [object Object].

That is perfect, my friend. Thank you very much!

Here is a version of the CSL JSON translator that exports attachments, notes, tags, and "extra": https://github.com/dlindem/zotero_lexbib_rdf/blob/af0379536a0fec316df62ceb2ab745e650b95f90/zotero/LexBib JSON.js#L109

Hello everyone. Back in 2021, this forum posting was extremely useful to me as I was looking for a way to get JSON export with tags. I was able to do this with a modification of the CSL JSON.js translator, using some combination of the suggestions above. I created a new "JSON with Tags.js" translator for this purpose which served me well.

The use for this ability is as follows: A friend of mine put together a nice little TypeScript script which loads a JSON list of exported Zotero items in a webpage and turns its tags into buttons (https://github.com/henriksen/bookie). When clicked, the buttons display a list of sources with URLs linking to the titles.

This was created for the purpose of sharing large lists of open access historical books/documents that are often available on archive.org. See an example here: https://froginawell.net/frog/primary-sources-the-malay-world/#books

Yesterday, I discover that at some point the modified JSON export with Tags translator, using one of the methods from above was broken. I believe this may have been due to some kind of change in the way translators are done. I was also not able to get things up and running with BBT as an alternative. Nor was david_lindemann's link above working for me anymore.

I ended up updating the modified script to bring in changed code in the latest CSL JSON.js I could find, and it seems to be functioning again after fiddling with the doExport() function again. Sharing the modified translator below in case a) this is useful to anyone else or b) this is not a good way to go about it, in which case, happy to accept suggestions for alternatives. For now, happy it is up and working again.

Any reason why JSON export can't include tags by default? Something to do with CSL standards?

CSL JSON with tags:

https://gist.github.com/kmlawson/0f3eb75f462bca340897a4d1daf2c708

Thanks! I think I'll stick with this hack for the time being. BBT export uses different names for fields and handles dates in the JSON different, so using that would mean I would have to go and tweak the bookie script as well. Fortunately, this is now working again!

In general, I would say that any differences between Zotero and BBT CSL JSON export, the BBT version is better

I'd still very much like to see a sample of such differences.

"CSL JSON saves dates differently than BBT", if that means ""CSL JSON saves dates differently than BBT CSL JSON", means that one of them is off-standard, as the way dates are represented in CSL JSON is fixed. They can't be structurally different and both be valid, and if BBT CSL JSON is out of spec, I'd love to fix that.

Hi @emilianoeheyns,

Thanks, glad you understood what was going on. I wish you luck in your debugging!

Here is CSL JSON example:
https://pastebin.com/UMVL9SYs

Here is BetterBitTeX JSON example:
https://pastebin.com/V1dG3nku

That includes tags (the topic of this forum thread) but, as I mentioned above, does not work with the Bookie code unmodified because of differences with this format without further work.

Here is an example with your Better CSL JSON:
https://pastebin.com/ugXGQuQh

Which is not helpful here since it doesn't include tags (defeating the purpose of using BBT). This is why this is not the export format I'm referring to as it offers no advantage over the original. You have a post above with something to do with postscripts, which looks like an interesting alternative solution but not one that was explained here and I couldn't make much sense of the github thread or the documentation pages for this.

The absolute simplest solution for my specific need was to duplicate and modify the translator again and add

if (item.tags) {
cslItem.tags = item.tags;
}

That saves me messing with Bookie. That is pretty much the modification to that file I linked above.

Thanks so much for your hard work on BetterBibTex - a wonderful resource.

Ok, I think I’m a bit tired now. You failed to understand the problem, you never provided an actual solution inside this thread (which I have, hack though it is), and you forward people to massive pages that don’t actually include the concrete solution for them (instead you offer more work for people who may not be coders as they try to decipher things). You fail to see the “relevance” of a format that is the only one you have that includes tags on export, when that is, in fact, the whole point of this thread (exporting tags in JSON, CSL is not the topic). In short, you have not been helpful here, at all. I think I’m done. If you have an actual solution to the problem you are welcome to post it here. I, however, have no more time and will move on to other tasks.