Allow selecting only specific bibtex fields to import

[huachuman]

Currently it imports all bibtex, but it would be really nice to be able to select only certain fields to display. Of course this could be done manually to every citation, but it would be much better to have it automatically done to every entry.

This would add a lot of versatility to the plugin's use, it could become useful in almost every note where you might want to call up a specific bibliography but don't necessarily want to display every field.

This could possibly be done with an input box in the theme settings where the user can write them manually seperated by comma, like: [ title, author, doi, year ]

[sandrofigo]

Great idea! This would be a helpful feature for sure. Are you able to help with a pull request?

[huachuman]

I'm not really a programmer so I doubt I'd be much help. I took a shot at creating a python script by asking for help from GPT4 that would do something like this and it works well but don't think it's close enough to what we're talking about here to be worth posting. Let me know if you think otherwise. Like right now the user would have to manually edit the script to include fields, although it's pretty simple and just requires adding the name of the field in one spot. The script specifically does the following: changes file extension from .bib to .md, removes all bibtex fields not specified by the user, and wraps each block in backticks with 'bibtex' beside it so that it displays nicely with pretty bibtex. But again, this is a python script, and does what we're looking for in a bit of a convoluted way so not quite what we're talking about.

If you could point me in the right direction of how I would modify this plugin, I can take a shot at using my rudimentary programming knowledge (did a lot of PHP, mysql, turing (lol) and VB back in highschool and did build a few websites back in the day) in combination with GPT4 to try and come up with something. But I wouldn't even know where to begin.

In other words, if you could provide some kind of high-level bullet points about how someone would go about implementing this idea (like in what file & location would you insert the UI for this, in what language would the thing that selects specific fields be written in, would it have to be its own separate script that gets called or where would it be placed, etc.), I would be more than happy to take a stab at the necessary steps myself, especially because I'm interested in one day building/modifying plugins for obsidian myself so it would be a cool experiment.

edit: here's that python script since we're here, in case anyone is interested:
edit2: I had posted an old script. Updated.

import os
import re
import glob

def process_file(input_file, output_file):
    with open(input_file, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
        input_text = file.read()
    fields = ['author', 'title', 'doi', 'journal']
    pattern = re.compile(r'(' + '|'.join(fields) + r')\s*=')
    entry_pattern = re.compile(r'@\w+\{[^,]+,')
    output_lines = []
    for line in input_text.split('\n'):
        if entry_pattern.match(line.strip()):
            output_lines.append('```bibtex')
            citekey = line.split('{')[1].split(',')[0]
            output_lines.append(line)
        elif pattern.match(line.strip()) or line.strip() == '}':
            output_lines.append(line)
            if line.strip() == '}':
                output_lines.append('```')
                output_lines.append('@' + citekey)
                output_lines.append('')
    output_text = '\n'.join(output_lines)
    with open(output_file, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as file:
        file.write(output_text)

input_directory = 'C:/Users/%username%/Documents/Bibliographies'
output_directory = 'C:/Users/%username%/Obsidian/Zotero collections (bib to md exports)'

if not os.path.exists(output_directory):
    os.makedirs(output_directory)

for input_file in glob.glob(os.path.join(input_directory, '*.bib')):
    output_file = os.path.join(output_directory, os.path.basename(input_file).replace('.bib', '.bib.md'))
    process_file(input_file, output_file)

Right now I have it set to run daily using Task Scheduler. I just launch the .py if I need a quick manual update. This lets me embed the prettified .bib results into notes using ![[SomeCollection.bib.md]].

[sandrofigo]

@huachuman Sorry for the late reply.
The parsing of the raw BibTeX entries has recently been updated in the plugin code, but the issue here is still relevant.

If you still want to get your hands dirty and try to come up with a solution I recommend watching this video if you want to learn about the whole process of creating a plugin for Obsidian (additionally a little bit of TypeScript and/or JavaScript knowledge is helpful)