cranndarach / bibman

Little command-line interface for BibTeX management.

Bibman

Little command-line interface for managing a BibTeX file.

Description

I mostly just wanted something simple and lightweight for managing references. This is a command-line utility that will save info about a reference in BibTeX format, and save a JSON-formatted "database" of your entries, along with any notes or tags for future searching purposes. I plan to add some utilities for searching or extracting entries, but I don't have a specific timeline in mind.

Basic schema:

• The program prompts for all of the typical fields needed to cite a journal article (you can change the default fields if you want)
• Prompts for any more info (you specify the field label and the value)
• Prompts for tags and notes
• Formats it into a typical .bib entry
• Shows you the result and asks for your approval before saving
• Saves the entry to your bibliography file (the path is specified in the script)
• Saves a copy of the entry string and the individual fields, notes, and tags in a JSON file (also specified in the script).

Usage

Requires Python >= 3 (written in 3.5), but otherwise no special dependencies.

Download the file/repository, and then open a terminal/command prompt and cd into the folder containing main.py. Example:

git clone https://github.com/cranndarach/bibman.git
cd bibman

Open main.py in your favorite editor and change the bib_path to wherever your bibliography file is—if it doesn't exist, the program will create it. Same for the db_path. (Note: Though there is no reason to expect anything bad to happen, please play it safe and make a backup of any existing files you plan to use here.)

Make any other edits you see fit (fields to prompt for, default values, etc.).

Save the file.

Back in your terminal/command prompt, run:

python main.py

This will take you through the prompts. It will confirm at the end whether you want to save it or not, in case you make a mistake. Otherwise, it will append the entry to the bottom of your BibTeX file, and the data to your JSON file, and quit (rerun python main.py to add more entries).