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.
• 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
• Zotero needs to be running to add Bib(La)Tex entries.

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 in 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

Tidy up *.bib file (zotero.tidyBib)

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

If you have a *.bib file with unused entries? Or maybe you manually added references to the manuscript file without using this extension? This command will tidy up the *.bib file by:

• Adding any missing bib entries that are used in the manuscript file but not in the *.bib file.
• Removing bib entries that are not used in the manuscript file.
• Sorting bib entries in *.bib file by alphabetical order.

The plugin will automatically create a backup of the original *.bib file before overwriting it. It also checks if there are multiple documents in the workspace. If so, it will ask user to select the manuscript file that will be used for tidying up the .bib file.

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).
• zotero.betterBibtexTranslator: Better BibTeX translator to use for exporting entries (default: Better BibLaTeX).

Customizing *.bib entry

The extension uses Better BibLaTeX translator to export entries from Zotero library. If you want to exclude certain fields from the exported bib entry, you need to set "Fields to omit from export" in Better BibTeX settings in Zotero (Zotero Settings > Better BibTeX > Export > Fields to omit from export). For example, if you want to exclude langid and file fields, you can add langid,file to this setting.

Release Notes

See CHANGELOG.md

VSCodium Users

If you are using VSCodium (or any other VSCode fork that does not have Marketplace access), you can obtain the extension by either:

• Get it from Open VSX Registry; or
• Download the .vsix file from the Releases page; or
• Use the VSIX Download Tool to download directly from the Marketplace (thanks to @jiangshiguo).

WSL Users

If your TeX environment is set up in WSL, you can still use this plugin by using mirrored networking mode (see here; thanks to @mirinae3145).

Todo

• [x] Performance optimization
• [x] Rewrite .bib reader/writer so that it does not require Better Bibtex database.
• [x] Support both bibtex and biblatex formats.
• [x] Better handling of multiple Zotero libraries
• [x] Code cleanup
• [ ] Better handling of appending citation to existing list of citations [e.g., automatically convert @item1 to @item1, @item2 when inserting second citation]

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.

I'm working on this project as a PhD student in my spare time (which is very, very limited, during the semester). So I apologize in advance if I cannot respond to issues or feature requests in a timely manner.