citeproc-js

A JavaScript implementation of the Citation Style Language

Authors:	Frank Bennett

About

The Citation Style Language (CSL) is an XML grammar for expressing the detailed requirements of a citation style. A CSL processor is a tool that generates citations and bibliographies by applying CSL style rules to bibliographic data.

The citeproc-js CSL processor is over a decade in service, a fact that shows through in ways both good and bad. On the downside, the code base is not pretty, and can serve as a solid illustration of the burden of technical debt (in case you need one of those for your computer science class). On the upside, though, citeproc-js passes a suite of over 1,300 integration tests with flying colors. When run in CSL-M mode [1] it can handle multilingual and legal content with a flexibility and precision unrivaled by any other tool at any price. And it has been quite heavily field-tested, as the citation formatter driving word processor integration in both Mendeley and Zotero.

More important than fleeting badges of popularity, though, is the CSL standard. Developers can take comfort in the technical strength of the CSL Specification, and the existence of other processors under active development. CSL is the modern way to handle bibliographic projects, and citeproc-js is a convenient way to take advantage of it.

Submitting bug reports

If you think you have found a processor bug, you can help track it down by submitting a test item or items that expose the error. To submit an item, join the public Jurism Test Submission group <https://www.zotero.org/groups/2339078/jurism_test_submissions>, sync, create a collection named for the style that shows the error, drop the item into it, jot a description of the problem in the Abstract field, and sync again.

For errors not associated with a particular style or item, file reports on the citeproc-js GitHub tracker <https://github.com/juris-m/citeproc-js/issues>.

Building the processor

The processor files citeproc.js` and citeproc_commonjs.js are built automatically when tests are run (see below).

Running Tests

The processor is supported by a little over 1,300 test fixtures, which can be run from a git clone of this repository after installing the Citeproc Test Runner. The system requirements (apart from git itself) are:

git

Needed to fetch a clone of the citeproc-js repository on GitHub.

node.js

Any recent-ish version should work. Version 7 is used for automated testing.

mocha

Install Mocha globally with npm install --global mocha.

java

This is used to perform schema validation. Browser extension is not required, a basic command-line install is all you need.

Once the system requirements are set up, install the test runner with the following command:

npm install -g citeproc-test-runner

You can now run the full suite of integration tests from the citeproc-js directory with the following command:

cslrun -a

You can review the full set of options by running``cslrun -h``. For more information on running tests, see the citeproc-js Manual or the README of the Citeproc Test Runner

Repository Content

The processor itself is contained in a single file. Two copies are in the repository: citeproc_commonjs.js (an ES6 module); and citeproc.js (a raw bundle of JavaScript). The former is probably what you will want for most purposes today.

The following command will pull the sources of the processor and supporting files:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Juris-M/citeproc-js.git

Directories of the repository contain a number of tools used for development and testing:

src

Processor source files. These are bundled into the two processor copies by the test script cslrun, distributed separately in the citeproc-test-runner package via npm (see below for details).

csl-schemata

The RelaxNG schemata for CSL and CSL-M. These are used to validate style code. The schemata are not used directly by the processor at runtime.

demo

Contains a simple example of processor configuration in a Web environment. Can be viewed by running a local webserver in the directory.

docs

Source files for the citeproc-js manual on ReadTheDocs.

fixtures/local

Integration test fixtures specific to the citeproc-js processor or to the CSL-M grammar variant.

fixtures/std

Standard CSL integration tests from the Citation Style Language repository.

fixtures/styles

Style-level tests. For more information, see the citeproc-js Manual or the README of the Citeproc Test Runner

juris-modules

Jurisdiction modules. These are used to CSL-M mode to render legal citations in country-specific forms.

locale

The standard locale files from the CSL project.

tools

An assortment of scripts that are used, or have been used at some point, in the maintenance of citeproc-js.

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[1]	CSL-M is set of private extensions to official CSL used by the Jurism reference manager, a variant of Zotero. For more information, see the citeproc-js Manual

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2019.03.27

FB