Pelican BibTeX

Organize your scientific publications with BibTeX in Pelican. Original author is Vlad Niculae (http://vene.ro). This project is forked from https://github.com/vene and provides support for multiple BibTeX files and slightly more advanced sorting and displaying options.

Note: This code is unlicensed. It was not submitted to the pelican-plugins official repository because of the license constraint imposed there.

Requirements

pelican_bibtex requires pybtex.

pip install pybtex

The example template (which is optional) requires Markdown at runtime.

pip install Markdown

How to Configure the Plugin

This plugin reads a user-specified BibTeX file and populates the context with a list of publications, ready to be used in your Jinja2 template.

As with all pelican plugins, you need to specify the path in which pelican searches for plugins. Let's assume you have cloned or downloaded this plugin to the folder plugins/pelican-bibtex inside your pelican folder. You then need to configure pelican like this by inserting the following into in pelicanconf.py:

PLUGIN_PATHS = [ 'plugins' ]
PLUGINS = [ 'other-plugin-a', 'other-plugin-b', 'pelican-bibtex' ]

The plugin itself is configured as follows (also in pelicanconf.py):

PUBLICATIONS = {
  'mypub': { 'file': 'content/publications.bib' }
}

What the Plugin provides

You will be able to find a publications variable in all templates. If the given file is present and readable, BibTeX entries will also be accessible in the template. As a result, the publications variable (dict) will contain a field with the identifier mypub (also a dict) containing entries of the following tuple:

(key, year, text, bibtex, pdf, slides, poster)

1. key is the BibTeX key (identifier) of the entry.
2. year is the year when the entry was published. Useful for grouping by year in templates using Jinja's groupby
3. text is the HTML formatted entry, generated by pybtex.
4. bibtex is a string containing BibTeX code for the entry, useful to make it available to people who want to cite your work.
5. pdf, slides, poster: in your BibTeX file, you can add these special fields, for example:

@article{
   foo13
   ...
   pdf = {/papers/foo13.pdf},
   slides = {/slides/foo13.html}
}

If a field is not defined, the tuple field will be None. Furthermore, the fields are stripped from the generated BibTeX (found in the bibtex field).

Advanced Configuration

The configuration allows for multiple files and control over several variables that are also passed on to the template phase. The following optional fields can be specified for each bibliography in the PUBLICATIONS variable:

• title: Title for this bibliography (h2), if empty, the bibliographies key is used instead.
• header: Bool denoting whether a header (h2) should be produced for this bibliography.
• split: Bool denoting whether bibliographies should be split by year (h3).
• split_link: Bool denoting whether to generate a "link to top" after each year's section.
• bottom_link: Bool denoting whether to generate a "link to top" after this bibliography.
• highlight: String, e.g., a name, that will be entailed in a <strong> tag to highlight.
• all_bibtex: Provide a link to the original .bib file

A PUBLICATIONS_NAVBAR variable can be used in pelicanconf.py to specify whether or not to produce a line that contains links to each bibliography section.

The following example contains a default entry simple-example plus a secondary bibliography modified-defaults in which all variables that can be configured through the plugin are set to non-standard.

PUBLICATIONS = {
  'simple-example': { 'file': 'all.bib' },
  'modified-defaults': {
    'file': 'all.bib',
    'title': 'Different Appearance',
    'header': False,
    'split': False,
    'split_link': False,
    'bottom_link': False,
    'highlight': ['Patrick Holthaus'],
    'all_bibtex': True }
}

PUBLICATIONS_NAVBAR = True

Template Example

You probably want to define a publications.html direct template that makes use of the variables this plugin defines. Create an appropriate template file in the folder templates and add it to pelican's search path by editing pelicanconf.py:

EXTRA_TEMPLATES_PATHS = [ 'templates' ]

The template also needs to be included in your page by adding the following to the header section. The entry must match the template's file name.

:template: publications

---

NOTE

If you don't define a template, this plugin won't achieve you any visible result.

---

Consider the following template for inclusion. It respects all configuration methods described above. Additionally, the following header entries can be used per page to restrict what bibliographies are displayed on that page and on which (header) level.

:bibliographies: modified-defaults,simple-example
:bibheader: 2

By default, all bibliographies are considered and included with an <h2> tag.

Click to reveal example template

{% extends "page.html" %}
{% block content %}

<!-- header part: original bootstrap pages content block -->
<section id="content" class="body">
    {% if page.title %}
        <h1 class="entry-title">{{ page.title }}</h1>
    {% endif %}
    {% import 'includes/translations.html' as translations with context %}
    {{ translations.translations_for(page) }}
    {% if PDF_PROCESSOR %}
        <a href="{{ SITEURL }}/pdf/{{ page.slug }}.pdf">
            get the pdf
        </a>
    {% endif %}
    <div class="entry-content">
        {{ page.content }}

<!-- add header navbar -->
{% if PUBLICATIONS_NAVBAR %}
<p>
  {% for bib in publications|sort %}
    <a class="reference external" href="#{{ bib }}">{{ publications[bib]['title'] }}</a>
    {% if not loop.last %}&middot;{% endif %}
  {% endfor %}
</p>
{% endif %}

<!-- check page header -->
{% if page.bibliographies %}
  {% set bibliographies = page.bibliographies.split(',') %}
{% else %}
  {% set bibliographies = publications.keys() %}
{% endif %}
{% if page.bibheader %}
  {% set mainheader = page.bibheader %}
  {% set splitheader = mainheader|int() + 1 %}
{% else %}
  {% set mainheader = 2 %}
  {% set splitheader = 3 %}
{% endif %}

<!-- add publication list -->
{% for bib in publications|sort %}
  {% if bib in bibliographies %}
    <div class="publications" id="{{ bib }}">
      {% if publications[bib]['header'] %}
        <h{{ mainheader }}>{{ publications[bib]['title'] }}</h{{ mainheader }}>
      {% endif %}
      {% if publications[bib]['all_bibtex'] %}
      {% set ns = namespace(fbt='') %}
      {% for key, year, text, bibtex, pdf, slides, poster in publications[bib]['data'] %}
        {% set ns.fbt = ns.fbt + bibtex %}
      {% endfor %}
      You can <a href="{{ publications[bib]['path'] }}" download>download</a> or <a data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#{{ bib }}-bib">display</a> all {{ publications[bib]['title']|lower }} in BibTeX format.
      <div style="clear:both" id="{{ bib }}-bib" class="collapse">
        {% set fbt = '```tex\n' + ns.fbt + '```' %}
        {{ fbt|md }}
        <a data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#{{ bib }}-bib">Hide BibTeX for all {{ publications[bib]['title']|lower }}</a>.
      </div>
      {% endif %}
      {% if publications[bib]['split'] %}
        {% set remember = namespace(year="0") %}
        {% for key, year, text, bibtex, pdf, slides, poster in publications[bib]['data'] %}
          {% if remember.year != year %}
            {% if remember.year !="0" %}
              </ul>
              {% if publications[bib]['split_link'] %}
                <div style="text-align:right"><i class="fa fa-arrow-up"></i> <a href="#">Back to top</a></div>
              {% endif %}
            {% endif %}
            <h{{ splitheader }}>{{ year }}</h{{ splitheader }}>
            <ul>
            {% set remember.year=year %}
          {% endif %}
          <li style="margin: 5px 0;" id="{{ key }}">
            {{ text }}
            [&nbsp;<a data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#{{ key}}-bib">BibTeX</a>&nbsp;]
            {% for label, target in [('PDF', pdf), ('Slides', slides), ('Poster', poster)] %}
              {{ "[&nbsp;<a href=\"%s\">%s</a>&nbsp;]" % (target, label) if target }}
            {% endfor %}
            <div style="clear:both" id="{{ key }}-bib" class="collapse">
              {% set bibtex = '```tex\n' + bibtex + '```' %}
              {{ bibtex|md }}
            </div>
          </li>
        {% endfor %}
        </ul>
      {% else %}
        <ul>
          {% for key, year, text, bibtex, pdf, slides, poster in publications[bib]['data'] %}
            <li style="margin: 5px 0;" id="{{ key }}">
              {{ text }}
              [&nbsp;<a data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#{{ key }}-bib">BibTeX</a>&nbsp;]
              {% for label, target in [('PDF', pdf), ('Slides', slides), ('Poster', poster)] %}
                {{ "[&nbsp;<a href=\"%s\">%s</a>&nbsp;]" % (target, label) if target }}
              {% endfor %}
              <div style="clear:both" id="{{ key }}-bib" class="collapse">
                {% set bibtex = '```tex\n' + bibtex + '```' %}
                {{ bibtex|md }}
              </div>
            </li>
          {% endfor %}
        </ul>
      {% endif %}
      {% if not loop.last and publications[bib]['bottom_link'] %}
        <div style="text-align:right"><i class="fa fa-arrow-up"></i> <a href="#">Back to top</a></div>
      {% endif %}
    </div>
  {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

<!-- footer part: original bootstrap pages content block -->
        {% if page.comments == 'enabled' %}
            {% include 'includes/comments.html' %}
        {% endif %}
    </div>
</section>

{% endblock %}

---

NOTE

This template uses Jinja filter to parse the resulting text with Markdown.

---

To make it work, you will have to include Markdown in the pelicanconf.py with:

from markdown import Markdown

And define the function md in pelicanconf.py as such:

def md(content, *args):
    return markdown.convert(content)
JINJA_FILTERS = {
    'md': md,
}

Extending this plugin

A relatively simple but possibly useful extension is to make it possible to write internal links in Pelican pages and blog posts that would point to the corresponding paper in the Publications page.

A slightly more complicated idea is to support general referencing in articles and pages, by having some BibTeX entries local to the page, and rendering the bibliography at the end of the article, with anchor links pointing to the right place.