Zotero CSV Merge

A script for merging data from a CSV file into a Zotero Library. Originally designed only to merge changes made to the Title and Extras fields, this script was written with reusability in mind and can be easily modified to include any desired fields or duplicate an existing library/collection to a new group or user.

Installation

1. Install rust and cargo. Installation can be verified by running rustup --version && cargo --version.
2. Clone the repository.
3. Create a .env in the root directory.
4. Add the required environment variables to the .env file.
5. Run cargo test which will build the binary, then test environment variables and core functionality.
6. To build the optimized binary run cargo build --release, the compiled binary will be located in ./target/release. For more information, see the cargo-build chapter of The Cargo Book.
7. To run the binary after building, run ./target/release/zotero-csv-merge. To build and run the binary in one step run cargo run --release. For more information, see the cargo-run chapter of The Cargo Book.
8. I would strongly recommend adding 2>&1 | tee /path/to/log.txt to either of these commands to store logs.

How it Works

1. A CSV of a given library or collection can be exported from Zotero as a either a backup or a more convenient way to make mass changes to the data.
2. The CSV reader goes through the file at CSV_PATH and deserializes the data into the fields specified in lib.rs::PatchData. Only the fields specified in the struct will be extracted from the CSV file and subsequently patched into Zotero.
3. The Zotero client then iterates through the extracted data, up to 50 entries at a time, posting the data into the group/user library specified by ZOTERO_GROUP_ID.

Environment Variables

The .env file that you create in the root directory of this repository must contain the following environment variables:

• ZOTERO_API_TOKEN: The API token used to authenticate the Zotero client. Personal API keys can be created by logging into zotero.org > Profile > Edit Profile > Security.
• ZOTERO_GROUP_ID: The group/user ID associated with the target library you wish to merge the CSV data into. User ID can be found in the same location specified above. From my experience, the easiest way to find Group ID is to send a GET request to https://api.zotero.org/users/<userID>/groups.
• CSV_PATH: The path to the CSV file relative to the project directory.

lib.rs::PatchData

As mentioned above, only the fields included in the lib.rs::PatchData struct will be extracted from the CSV and merged back into Zotero. When adding fields to the struct, it's important to make sure fields can be properly (de)serialized by serde. You should run a GET request on an existing item in order to see how fields are named in the API. As an example, the field for Abstract is named Abstract Note in the CSV but is referred to by the API as abstractNote. That particular field would be named abstract_note in the struct to adhere to Rust naming conventions and would need to be annotated with #[serde(rename(deserialize = "Abstract Note", serialize = "abstractNote"))] in order for both extracting from the CSV and posting to Zotero to work. All field names that are one word in the CSV are already covered by the blanket #[serde(rename_all(deserialize = "PascalCase"))] annotation on the struct, and do not need to be individually annotated. For more information on these annotations, see Field Attributes section of serde docs.

It should also be noted that key is a required field when updating existing entries, if it is not included, new entries will be created.

Version

1.0.1

All functionality added, successfully tested and used