pybtex: A Plugin for Pelican

Organize your scientific publications with pybtex (BibTeX) in Pelican.

Installation

This plugin can be installed via:

pip install pelican-pybtex

This a "namespace plugin" for Pelican. After installation, it should be automatically detected. It is enabled by default if PLUGINS is not set on your configuration. In case that variable is set, add pybtex to the list of plugins to load. For more information, check How to Use Plugins documentation.

Usage

This plugin reads a user-specified pybtex supported file and populates the global Jinja2 context used by Pelican with a publications variable. The publications variable is a list of dictionaries itself, each containing the following fields, corresponding to individual entries in the provided compatible files:

• label: The formatted label (depends on the used style, but usually something like 3, Ein05, or Einstein, 1905).
• key: The pybtex (BibTeX) database key
• year: The year of the entry
• html: An HTML-formatted version of the entry
• bibtex: A BibTeX-formatted version of the entry, wrapped in a pygments HTML-formatted version. The pygments output respects the settings for PYGMENTS_RST_OPTIONS in Pelican.

Use the following Pelican configuration key to list sources to be parsed and populate the publications context:

# any pybtex supported input format is accepted
PYBTEX_SOURCES = ["content/publications.bib"]

If files indicated on that list are present and readable, they will be loaded. Errors are reported, but ignored during generation. Check Pelican logs for details while building your site.

Note that relative paths are considered with respect to the location of the setting of PATH in pelicanconf.py (typically the content directory). If PATH itself is relative, it is considered relative to the location of pelicanconf.py itself.

Extra fields

If you also set PYBTEX_ADD_ENTRY_FIELDS, then if any other field listed in this setting will also be included verbatim in the dictionary of each entry. This feature can be used, e.g., to include more URLs in a work, and then display those using a custom template as explained later.

PYBTEX_ADD_ENTRY_FIELDS = ["url", "pdf", "slides", "poster"]

Formatting style

By default, PYBTEX_FORMAT_STYLE is set to plain. You may further customize this setting to one of the biobliography formatting styles supported by pybtex (currently "plain", "alpha", "unsrt", and "unsrtalpha"). You may check the formatting style of these BibTeX styles on this reference. We currently do not support custom bibliographic styles. Create an issue if you would like to work on this.

Publications page

This plugin provides a default publications.html template that will render all publications correctly loaded from PYBTEX_SOURCES, ordered by year, in reverse chronological order, and without BibTeX-style labels. Note that, if there are no valid entries on PYBTEX_SOURCES, then a publications.html page is not generated.

You may also want to override the default template, or parts of it with your own modifications. To do so, create your own publications.html template, then use THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES and THEME_STATIC_PATHS to add search paths for template resolution. For example, to add a short introductory text, we could override the before_content block on the default template like so:

1. Create a file called templates/publications.html on your site sources, with the following (example) contents:

   {% extends "!pybtex/publications.html" %}
   
   {% block before_content %}
   <p id="before-para">This will appear before the publication lists. One could use this
       to display their h-index, provide links to Google Scholar or ORCid.</p>
   {% endblock %}
   
   <!-- set PYBTEX_ADD_ENTRY_FIELDS = ["url", "pdf", "slides", "poster"] -->
   <!-- then, use it in your template override like so: -->
   {% block content_pybtex %}
   <div id="pybtex">
       {% for item in publications %}
       <details id="{{ item.key }}">
           <summary>[{{ item.label }}] {{ item.html }}</summary>
           <ul>
           {% for k in ("url", "pdf", "slides", "poster") %}
               {% if k in item %}<li>{{ k }}: {{ item[k] }}</li>{% endif %}
           {% endfor %}
           </ul>
       </details>
       {% endfor %}
   </div>
   {% endblock %}

2. Optionally, create a directory called static in which you may pour static files that control the look of your inserted content.

3. In pelicanconf.py, set:

   THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES = ["templates"]
   # STATIC_PATHS = ["static"]  ## if you also have static files to be copied
   # PUBLICATIONS_SAVE_AS = "publications/index.html"  ## to change the default output file
   # PUBLICATIONS_URL = "publications/"  ## to change the default URL for publications

Local bibliography in articles and pages

You may use markers such as [@bibkey] or [@@bibkey] on your articles and pages in restructuredtext or markdown formats, to refer to bibliography entries from the PYBTEX_SOURCES. This process is similar to using BibTeX database entries in your LaTeX sources by using the \cite{bibkey} command. In this case, this plugin will replace these citations with links to a bibliography database injected at the end of the article or post.

The global PYBTEX_FORMAT_STYLE is respected while formatting bibliographies. You may override the style for the current article or page using the metadata entry pybtex_format_style. The same mechanism is available for PYBTEX_ADD_ENTRY_FIELDS, which can be locally overriden by pybtex_add_entry_fields metadata entry.

You may also add further enrich article or page metadata defining a specific pybtex_sources. In such a case, these files will be loaded respecting the same rules as for PYBTEX_SOURCES. Specifically, relative paths are first searched at the location of the article or page, and then default on using the PATH setting in pelicanconf.py. Article and page bibliography markers will then be resolved by first looking at entries in the local pybtex_sources, and then on the global PYBTEX_SOURCES entry in pelicanconf.py.

Be aware that in case repeated citation keys are found across all bibliography databases, the last occurence is used while resolving local bibliography for articles an pages.

Finally, local bibliography formatting is controlled by the default bibliography.html template that is shipped with this package. This templates defines the contents of the injected bibliography section on articles and pages. You may override this template in a similar way to what was explained above for the global publications.html template, by setting the THEME_TEMPLATES_OVERRIDES Pelican variable.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome and appreciated. Every little bit helps. You can contribute by improving the documentation, adding missing features, and fixing bugs. You can also help out by reviewing and commenting on existing issues.

To start contributing to this plugin, review the Contributing to Pelican documentation, beginning with the Contributing Code section.

Development

This plugin is developed using pixi. Install pixi, then checkout this repository.

Prime the development environment with: pixi install, then run test units with:

pixi run test
pixi run test-cov  # runs tests and measures coverage

To run the unit tests for different versions of Python do one or more of the items below:

pixi run -e test39 test
pixi run -e test310 test
pixi run -e test311 test
pixi run -e test312 test
pixi run -e test313 test

Releasing

Releasing is based on a GitHub workflow, tied to repository tags on the main development branch. Release deployment is conducted automatically on PyPI and GitHub releases after appropriate quality control and testing.

License

This project was inspired by the original BibTeX plugin, developed by Vlad Niculae, and pelican-cite plugin, by Arvid Norlander. This project and further modifications are licensed under the MIT license.