New plugin: Citations (with Zotero)

You don’t have to reload the library - if you add a new citation in zotero, it is integrated immediately

I’m not able to replicate this feature. It doesn’t integrate immediately for me.

Are you using BetterBibtex in zotero? Have you set automatic export to “on change”?

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I’m using BetterBibtex and it is setup to export to CSL-JSON “onChange”. I just tested it by adding references and I can see that it is making the export when the change was made. However, when I tried to add the item using “Insert Literature…” option, it did not show up in the search list.

:thinking: As it is working for me, the plugin should at least have this feature… :wink: : No idea why it isn’t working for you…

Okay, looks like I figured out why it isn’t working. The path to the CSL-JSON file was located inside Google Drive File Stream path. For whatever reason, the changes to a file inside this repository isn’t being picked up by the plugin / obsidian. When I changed the export path to a normal local /Users/ path, it picked up the change. Perhaps, a bug? Could you try and see if you can reproduce this? Thanks in advance.

@raivivek I am not the developer of the plugin… :wink:

I can’t try to reproduce this as I am not using Google Drive - but if you think this is a bug, you might better report it here

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Hi,

Thanks for this great plugin !
I’m looking to improve my configuration a little bit. Mdnotes proposes something that I find very useful and that I would like to integrate in the “citations” plugin: the possibility to directly insert a wikilink in the name of the authors.

Would it be possible to consider an option for this ? An adaptation of “authorString” allowing to generate

[[Surname Name]] [[Surname Name]]

Instead of

Surname Name, Surname Name

:thinking:

Hey. I’m here to say that I love your plugin. It is now an indispensable part of my workflow. I absolutely love it.
If there is one friction I noticed, was that when I search for citationkeys it fails to find them. I don’t know if that’s intentional or not, but if you could add the ability to search for citationkeys as well, it would be great!
Again thank you for your amazing plugin!

As I said before, awesome plugin. I wonder if you could make a little tiny addition: please, add Usage information (like you have here: https://github.com/hans/obsidian-citation-plugin/tree/0.1.3) into “Citation plugin settings”. It will be very convenient to have a reminder about hotkeys handy.

I might be doing something wrong, but Ctrl + Shift + I does not work on Mac (Ctrl + Shift + O works fine).

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I think (based on a previous post) that search by citekey is on the roadmap.

@raivivek, I’m not the developer either, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that the auto-refresh only works with biblatex files. (Maybe that’s not the case any more.) Did you try to export it to bibtex instead of json and see if it works then?

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I have this problem too. I have to quit Obsidian and restart it for the plugin to reread my bib file.

FWIW, I used to have this problem too, but not since the last few updates.
The workaround I had was not to quit Obsidian but go into the plugin setting and re-enter the path to the bib file. Then it refreshed.
Not ideal, but it was more usable than quitting Obs. every time (I tend to add to my bib file a lot when I write).

@JohnAtl and @atiz also, look into the Advanced tab in the Zotero Bibtex options. I found out that the slider was set to 0, therefore no background update was occurring. Move the slide to 1, and everything is now working like a charm.

I have an unrelated question, which might only a result of my lack of experience with Obsidian and the Citation plugin. I am able to create notes from my Zotero bibliography quite easily, each one is saved in the dedicated folder with @citekey title. Is there, however, a way to add the Markdown citation in a different note so that it redirects to the original note?
To put it in other words:

  • I have a note (e.g. titled @rastrelli2021) in which I discuss findings from a paper.
  • in a separate note, I am summarising findings from different papers which I would then move to Word following the guide suggested here. So a “working” Zotero citation is needed.
  • right now I am able to migrate the note to a Word file with a working Zotero citation (meaning that [@rastrelli2021], mark the brackets, gets converted to a working citation in Word). However, the Markdown citation does not link to the note. If i change the template for a Markdown citation with a double-bracket [[@citekey]], it works both as a link to the note and as a citation in Word, but the brackets remain in Word.

Of course this is a minor nuisance (I mean, I can just cmd-F for square brackets and edit the Word file) but I believe I might be missing something else completely…

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I have tried to experiment with that too, but I think a reference is either a citation or a link to the note, but can’t be both at the same time. It seems to be a consequence of the markdown syntax – [@citekey] for citations and [[…]] for links. I haven’t found any clever way to override that.

(Also, I don’t use Zotero at all, was only trying to help previously… The plugin works great with my bibtex, which I maintain with Bibdesk, so no zotero export is needed.)

Hello everyone! I have been searching for my answer but I have not been able to figure out what I am doing wrong. I can download things, I can mess things up on my computer, but I can’t seem to get the citations plugin to see my .bib file.

I am using Windows 10 and I have exported my Better BibLaTex file from Zotero, I have it saved to my vault, and think I have pointed the plugin to where my file is located but the plugin is unable to see my file. Can anyone help me out? I am totally lost.

@Cheatbone it is quite difficult to give some advice if you don’t describe in more detail, what exactly you have tried so far.

Basically, you don’t even need to put your bib file in your vault. The only thing you have to do is to open the plugin settings and enter the path to your bib file in the “Citation database path” field. Have you done this?

Thanks for the response @alltagsverstand! I have followed the instructions given. I have

  1. Exported the Better BibLaTex file from Zotero (and the Better CSL JSON file as well)
  2. First I saved it to my Dropbox folder just to keep it close to my vault
  3. I found the file in Windows explorer and copied the location and pasted it into the plugin
  4. When that was not successful I saved the file to my desktop thinking that Dropbox might be the problem.
  5. When this didn’t work I tried adding .bib to my file.
    I am now stuck and don’t know what to do.

My guess is I am not entering the location in correctly. I thought copying the location from the properties of the file would give me the correct location.

Thanks again for your help and your patience!

@Cheatbone How does your copied path look like?

And how did you export your file from zotero? Did you follow the auto-export instructions from BetterBibtex?