telescope-bibtex

Search and paste entries from *.bib files with telescope.nvim.

The *.bib files must be under the current working directory or you need to supply global files/directories (see Configuration).

Requirements

This is a plugin for telescope.nvim. Therefore, it needs to be installed as well.

Installation

Plug

Plug 'nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim'
Plug 'nvim-telescope/telescope-bibtex.nvim'

Packer

use { "nvim-telescope/telescope-bibtex.nvim",
  requires = {
    {'nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim'},
  },
  config = function ()
    require"telescope".load_extension("bibtex")
  end,
}

Usage

Before using telescope-bibtex, you must load it (this is already taken care of in the packer snippet above).

:lua require"telescope".load_extension("bibtex")

Then simply call the bibtex picker with:

:Telescope bibtex

Keybindings (Actions)

The entry picker comes with four different actions.

key	Usage	Result
<cr>	Insert the citation label	@Newton1687
<c-e>	Insert the citation entry	@book{newton1687philosophiae,    title={Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica},    author={Newton, I.},    year={1687},    publisher={J. Societatis Regiae ac Typis J. Streater} }
<c-c>	Insert a formatted citation	Newton, I. (1687), Philosophiae naturalis principa mathematica.

<c-f> inserts the value of a bibtex field according to user selection. For example, to insert the title of an entry, <c-f> will open a new telescope buffer with the available fields. Selecting the title field will show the title in the preview window and <cr> will insert it into the main buffer.

Configuration

The default configuration for telescope-bibtex is:

require"telescope".setup {
  ...

  extensions = {
    bibtex = {
      -- Depth for the *.bib file
      depth = 1,
      -- Custom format for citation label
      custom_formats = {},
      -- Format to use for citation label.
      -- Try to match the filetype by default, or use 'plain'
      format = '',
      -- Path to global bibliographies (placed outside of the project)
      global_files = {},
      -- Define the search keys to use in the picker
      search_keys = { 'author', 'year', 'title' },
      -- Template for the formatted citation
      citation_format = '{{author}} ({{year}}), {{title}}.',
      -- Only use initials for the authors first name
      citation_trim_firstname = true,
      -- Max number of authors to write in the formatted citation
      -- following authors will be replaced by "et al."
      citation_max_auth = 2,
      -- Context awareness disabled by default
      context = false,
      -- Fallback to global/directory .bib files if context not found
      -- This setting has no effect if context = false
      context_fallback = true,
      -- Wrapping in the preview window is disabled by default
      wrap = false,
      -- user defined mappings
      mappings = {
          i = {
            ["<CR>"] = bibtex_actions.key_append('%s'), -- format is determined by filetype if the user has not set it explictly
            ["<C-e>"] = bibtex_actions.entry_append,
            ["<C-c>"] = bibtex_actions.citation_append('{{author}} ({{year}}), {{title}}.'),
          }
      },
    },
  }
}

Context Aware Bibliography File

If enabled, the plugin will look for context lines in your currently opened file that imply which bibliography file you want to use. See below for common examples based on filetype:

Filetype	Context
pandoc, md, rmd	bibliography: file_path_with_ext
tex	\bibliography{relative_file_path_no_ext} or \addbibresource{relative_file_path_with_ext}

Note: Context awareness ignores the global bibliography files as well as the normal searching in the current directory.

Context awareness can be enabled in the setup with context.

If a context is not found in the current file, telescope-bibtex can fallback to the non-contextual behavior with context_fallback

require"telescope".setup {
  ...

  extensions = {
    bibtex = {
      -- Use context awareness
      context = true,
      -- Use non-contextual behavior if no context found
      -- This setting has no effect if context = false
      context_fallback = true,
    },
  }
}

To quickly change the context awareness, you can specify it via the options:

:Telescope bibtex context=false

Label formats

Three common formats are pre-implemented:

Identifier	Result
tex	\cite{label}
markdown, md	@label
plain	label

It is possible to implement custom formats as well. In that case, you must declare the new format under custom_formats and enable it with format.

require"telescope".setup {
  ...

  extensions = {
    bibtex = {
      -- Custom format for citation label
      custom_formats = {
        {id = 'myCoolFormat', cite_marker = '#%s#'}
      },
      format = 'myCoolFormat',
    },
  }
}

The id field is the identifier for your custom format (the one to re-use in the format option), while the cite_marker uses lua pattern matching to apply the format. In the example above, the citation label would then be #label#.

If format is not defined, the plugin will try to find the right format based on the filetype. If there is no format for the filetype it will fall back to plain format.

To quickly change the format, you can specify it via the options:

:Telescope bibtex format=markdown

Search keys

You can configure telescope-bibtex to be able to search by other fields than author, year and title. If you want to first search by publisher, then author and finally label (the citation key), just use

search_keys = { 'publisher','author', 'label' }

Formatted citations

Telescope-bibtex allows you to paste a formatted citation in plain text.

Note that it is not currently possible to just ask for a usual style such as Chicago, APA,... Instead, you need to provide a template yourself if you want something specific.

The default format will produce a citation formatted like Name, F. (YYYY), Title. You can use any field of the bibtex entry to customize the citation_format parameter. If the fields are not present, they will be left empty when pasting the formatted citation. Besides the regular bibtex fields, you can also use {{label}} for the entry label and {{type}} for the type of entry (article, book, masterthesis, etc).

Example of citation_format for people using this feature for markdown references:

citation_format = "[[^@{{label}}]]: {{author}} ({{year}}), {{title}}.",

It is also possible to trim the first (and middle) names of the authors in order to keep only the initials (using citation_trim_firstname). The citation formatter is also able to replace large numbers of authors by the common et al. locution. Just specify the number of authors you want to keep in full with citation_max_auth.

Custom Mappings

To define a custom mapping you need to define one of the actions provided by the plugin. You can pass options to the action to further customize it. One use-case for this could be to define different latex \cite{} mappings or other formats:

local bibtex_actions = require('telescope-bibtex.actions')

mappings = {
  i = {
    ["<C-a>"] = bibtex_actions.key_append([[\citep{%s}]]), -- a string with %s to be replaced by the citation key
    ["<C-b>"] = bibtex_actions.citation_append('[^@{{label}}]: {{author}}, {{title}}, {{journal}}, {{year}}, vol. {{volume}}, no. {{number}}, p. {{pages}}.'), -- a string with keys in {{}} to be replaced
    ["<C-c>"] = bibtex_actions.entry_append(), -- entry_append does not take any arguments
  }
}

Troubleshooting

If the config does not seem to work/apply, check at which point you load the extension. The extension will only be initialized with the right config if it is loaded after calling the setup function.