Citoid



The citoid node.js service generated citation data given a URL, DOI, PMID, or PMCID. It has a companion extension, Citoid, which aims to provide use of the citoid service to VisualEditor. It is currently deployed in all VisualEditor-enabled WMF-Wikis, though the extension is only configured on a few of them.

Public API
To request metadata about a URL, DOI, PMCID or PMID, you can use the API endpoint at [//citoid.wikimedia.org citoid.wikimedia.org] and provide a GET request with the required parameters " " and " ".

The " " parameter takes as value the URL-encoded URL, DOI, PMCID or PMID.

The " " parameter takes the values " ", " ", " ", and " ".

An example request is

Issue tracker and project management
Bugs, issues, and suggestions for improvement can be added to the Citoid phabricator project.

Installation
Citoid is a nodejs app that also requires a working installation of Zotero's translation server, which uses the Zotero translators library, and xulrunner. Please note that the most recent version of xpcshell doesn't work with translation-server; the latest version known to work is 29.0.

Install nodejs and npm
Install nodejs 0.10 and npm. When you are using Ubuntu and depending on OS version you will not end up with the most recent version of nodejs.

For other systems, see:
 * http://nodejs.org/download/
 * https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager
 * (Debian Squeeze, Wheezy) https://gist.github.com/x-Code-x/2562576

Install and configure Zotero's translation server
See: Translation-server installation instructions

Note: The most recent version of xpcshell does not work with translation-server. Install version 29.0.

Get the code
If you want to do an anonymous checkout:

Or if you plan to hack citoid, then please follow the Gerrit 'getting started' docs and use an authenticated checkout url instead, such as:

JS dependencies
Install the JS dependencies. Run this command in the citoid directory:

Modify config.yaml
Config.yaml contains the configuration for the citoid service. The defaults should work out of the box for development, however, they may need to be modified in a deployment set-up.

Run the server
You'll first need to run translation-server; see the directions on its github page, but generally from the translation-server directory you should run:

You should be able to start the citoid web service from the citoid directory using:

This will start the citoid service on port 1970. To test it, navigate to http://localhost:1970 in your browser. You'll be able to test sample queries from this page.

Install Citoid extension
In order to have citoid functioning on your wiki in conjunction with VisualEditor, you'll need the following: VisualEditor and Parsoid, VisualEditor's Citation Tool, and the Citoid extension.

It is recommended that you have the following extensions in your extension folder: Extension:VisualEditor, Extension:Scribunto, Extension:Cite, Extension:TemplateData, and Extension:ParserFunctions, and Extension:Citoid.

VisualEditor and Citation Tool

 * 1) Set up MediaWiki: Manual:Installation_guide
 * 2) Set up Parsoid: Parsoid/Setup
 * 3) Set up VisualEditor: Extension:VisualEditor
 * 4) Set up Citation Tool: VisualEditor/Citation tool

Citoid extension
If you want to do an anonymous checkout:

Or if you plan to hack citoid, then please follow the Gerrit 'getting started' docs and use an authenticated checkout url instead, such as:

Then add the following line to your wiki's  after you have downloaded the extension:

Set the location to your citoid service instance in your wiki's

Configure Citoid on a Citoid-enabled wiki
The citoid extension must be configured using special TemplateData maps and a special citoid-specific message. It is currently deployed in all VisualEditor-enabled WMF-Wikis, but it must be configured before it can be used.

Configure special MediaWiki namespace Citoid message
You'll need to configure a special MediaWiki: namespace message. This message maps the native citoid types (website, book, journalArticle) to the appropriate template (Cite web, Cite book, Cite journal). You should match a template to every single citoid type; there is no default behaviour if no template is matched to a particular type. It's better to have a bad match (there may be some fields in common between video liner notes and a book, or video liner notes and a video, for example) than none at all.

You may consider using en wiki's Template:Citation as a catch-all for types where there is no good type match as it is designed for this situation.

An sample namespace message is found here: Citoid/MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json

Every available citoid type is listed as a key in the sample namespace message.

Ensure each template specified in MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json has an 'citoid' maps value
Since Citoid has its own set of fields for each document type (for instance, the journal name is called 'publicationTitle' in citoid, but 'journal' in Template:Cite_journal), each Template must have TemplateData defined that creates a map between citoid's fields and the Template's field. Calling the map 'citoid' lets the citoid extension know which map to look for. If the map 'citoid' doesn't suit your purposes for use with say, a userscript, you may create a citoid service related map that is called something else; an unlimited number of maps with unique keys are allowed in the maps object. Note that you can only see TemplateData maps in edit mode; they are not visible in the TemplateData table.

Examples of maps objects that are compatible with the citoid extension are on beta:
 * http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Template:Cite_news/doc
 * http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Template:Cite_journal/doc
 * http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Template:Cite_web/doc
 * http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Template:Cite_book/doc
 * http://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Template:Citation/doc

Inspector does not appear in the toolbar
An icon for the inspector should appear in the toolbar menu. If the icon does not appear in the toolbar, it most likely means there's a problem with MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json. If there is no message at that location, or if the JSON is invalid, the inspector will not load. Alternatively, you may need to refresh your JavaScript cache.

Empty references appear
Empty references most commonly appear when the citation template being inserted contains no maps data, or if the maps data is there but not making it to the MediaWiki API. First, determine the template that the inspector is attempted to insert, for example,. View source of the template or documentation page to verify that "maps": {

"citoid": { is present and contains fields. Then verify that these data are making it to the MediaWiki API by visiting the API page, i.e. http://localhost/api.php?action=templatedata&titles=Template:Cite%20web/doc&format=jsonfm on your local installation, or https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=templatedata&titles=Template:Cite%20web&format=jsonfm on en wiki.

If the maps object is present in TemplateData, but not in the API response, try editing the template where the TemplateData is transcluded i.e.  (but making no changes) and saving it, a.k.a. a "null edit". There is a known bug with transcluded TemplateData where it can take a long for the API to update; null edits force the change.

If the response from the API looks okay, there may be an issue with the map itself.

The inspector is still "pending" after a really long time following insertion
This typically means there is a bug. If you open your JavaScript console, you will likely find error messages that will help you debug.

Access date is formatted differently on my wiki
The dates are in ISO format, which is an international standard. On the back-end, we're sticking to ISO and in the future all dates will all be in ISO, not just access date. This is because it is an unambiguous way to present the date in any language. If the community doesn't like the way this looks to the user, it is possible to edit the citation template to format the ISO dates to something that is standard in your language. For instance, you can add logic to the template such that if the date is detected to be in ISO yyyy/mm/dd format, the date is reformatted *to appear* to be dd/mm/yyyy on the page. However, if you do this, the underlying data (i.e. when you edit the wikitext, or the form in VisualEditor) will still remain the same.

Citoid has disappeared from my wiki
Please report this on Phabricator, and see that task for a temporary workaround.

Testing for the translators using the "server" option or 'v' flag
To test with translation-server, download and install https://github.com/zotero/translation-server Your translator will need to have the 'v' flag enabled for 'browserSupport'. More here on that: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/translators As an example, see https://github.com/zotero/translators/blob/master/3news.co.nz.js ; you will see there are a bunch of letters, one of which is v, which corresponds to translation-server. If server support is not enabled by testing it/then adding the 'v' flag, we won't be able to use the translator.