VSCode Zotero

An extension to insert reference from Zotero library and add them to a bib file.

The problems

Currently available Zotero extensions for VSCode are not useful for inserting citations from Zotero library. They either:

• Rely on Zotero's citation picker, which can be slow and aesthetically inconsistent with VSCode.
• Require you to first export your Zotero library to a Bibtex file, which is not convenient.
• Require Zotero to be running.
• Do not support quarto files.
• Has not been updated for a long time.

Also, the official Quarto extension for VSCode only supports Zotero citations in visual mode.

Requirements

• Zotero
• Zotero Better Bibtex

Features

At the moment, the extension supports quarto and latex for inserting citation from Zotero library.

Insert citation (zotero.searchLibrary)

(macOS: ctrl + cmd + r, Windows/Linux: ctrl + alt + r).

Items in local Zotero database with Bibtex citation key will be shown in Quick Picks.

If you sellect an item, it will automatically add to *.bib file of your project. The extension searches *.bib file in the following order:

1. *.bib file in quarto or latex file header (for quarto, this includes _quarto.yml)
2. bibliography.bib or references.bib file in the workspace root directory
3. Any *.bib file i the workspace root directory.
4. If none of above is available, ask user to provide path, or create a new one (you still need to add the file to quarto or latex header).

Open PDF/Zotero entry/DOI of citation item under cursor (zotero.openItem)

(macOS: ctrl + cmd + o, Windows/Linux: ctrl + alt + o).

For any citations that were inserted using this extension, you can:

1. PDF file of the item using Zotero PDF viewer.
2. Open and show the item in Zotero library
3. Open DOI link using the default browser

Extension Settings

• zotero.zoteroDbPath: Path to Zotero database file (default: ~/Zotero/zotero.sqlite).
• zotero.betterBibtexDbPath: Path to Better BibTex database file (default: ~/Zotero/better-bibtex.sqlite).

Release Notes

See CHANGELOG.md

Todo

• [ ] Performance optimization
• [ ] Rewrite .bib reader/writer so that it does not require Better Bibtex database.

Notes

This extension began as a fork of telescope-zotero.nvim, which is an excellent Zotero extension using Neovim to edit quarto documents. The only reason kept me from migrating to VSCode for editing quarto documents was the lack of a good Zotero extension.

The code is heavily inspired by it, but rewritten in TypeScript for VSCode. I do not speak TypeScript, so I drafted the code using Claude and manually fixed the code to make it work. Hence, if you think I did something wrong, you're probably right.

Has not been tested on Windows or linux. If you find any issues, please let me know.