zotxt is a Zotero extension for supporting utilities that deal with plain text files (e.g., markdown, reStructuredText, latex, etc.)
zotxt is compatible with Zotero 5. Older versions were compatible with Zotero 4, but these are no longer supported.
- Visit https://github.com/egh/zotxt/releases
- Download the latest
.xpi
file. - Start Zotero standalone.
- In Zotero, select Tools -> Add-ons -> Gear (upper right) -> Install Add-On from file, and install the downloaded xpi file.
It is recommended that you also install Better BibTeX for Zotero, which provides excellent citation key management.
If you use pandoc, zotxt can help you deal with citations stored in Zotero. After installing the extension, modify your Zotero preferences to make the “Easy Citekey” exporter your default for “Quick Copy”.
Now, when editing a markdown document in your text editor, use either
the drag and drop or quick copy shortcut key (Ctrl-Alt-C) to copy a
pandoc-compatible “Easy Citekey” citation into your document. You can
also generate your own citekey using the author’s last name, a word
from the title, and the date, e.g., @doe:2000title
You will need to install the pandoc-zotxt
script. This can be done
with pip:
sudo pip install pandoc-zotxt
or you can install from source using the setup.py
file.
Pandoc can now be invoked using its filter feature:
pandoc -F pandoc-zotxt -F pandoc-citeproc document.md
This will generate a JSON file in temporary storage and load your citations into it. The citations will be passed on to pandoc.
Sometimes you may wish to set a custom key for an item; for instance,
in the case where two items would have the same key otherwise. This
can be done by adding a tag of the form: @doe:2014title
to an item
in Zotero, or by adding a note with the same content. Zotxt will first
look for keys in a note or tag before resolving the item otherwise.
The Zotxt API is exposed via http://127.0.0.1:23119/zotxt/
. To
retrieve an item, use the items
endpoint with different
parameters. you can query using the params easykey
, key
,
selected=t
, all=t
, or collection
. For example:
http://127.0.0.1:23119/zotxt/items?easykey=roe-doe:2015hyphens
For collection
or key
, provide the Zotero key (e.g.
0_VWYXZ1A1
)
You can return the data in different formats by using the format
parameter,
including easykey
(an array of easykeys), betterbibtexkey
(an array of
better bibtex keys), key
(an array of Zotero keys), bibtex
,
bibliography
(see also the style
parameter), or json
(which output
CSL-JSON format, using Zotero BetterBibTeX’s export if available). For example:
http://127.0.0.1:23119/zotxt/items?easykey=roe-doe:2015hyphens&format=easykey
To search, use the search
endpoint with the q
parameter. This
uses the title/creator/year quick search. You can use the format
param as in the items
endpoint. For example:
http://127.0.0.1:23119/zotxt/search?q=doe&format=easykey
You can supply an argument to the method
parameter to change the
quicksearch version, either titleCreatorYear
(the default),
everything
or fields
.