Citoid

Citoid is a node.js service which currently locates citation data given an URL. It has a companion extension of the same name which aims to provide use of the citoid service to VisualEditor. Neither the service nor the extension are presently production ready. Ultimately, the goal is for the citoid service to provide citations given any search term, such as URL, DOI, title of the work, etc.

API
To request metadata about a url, use the url endpoint and provide a POST request with the parameters "url" and "format". "url" will take any URI, including those without protocol (urls with no protocol specified are queried as http). "Format" takes "zotero", "mediawiki" and "mwDeprecated."

For more, see Citoid/API

Current design

 * 1) Queries Zotero translator-server for translator.
 * 2) *Lists of supported services exist
 * 3) *Many applications already expose the data in a way that Zotero understands
 * 4) If no translator found, follow redirects (for the case of shortened URLs- this is not done initially because in many cases the redirect will be to a log-in url).
 * 5) Query Zotero translator-server for translators again.
 * 6) If no translator found, send to a native scraper that pulls out the title only.

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. These are included in a deployment repository, or you can install each component individually. Please note that the most recent version of xpcshell doesn't work with translation-server; the deploy directory contains a version which is known to work (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

Checkout deploy repo
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:

Update submodules
This will put the source of citoid in the /src/ directory. This may not always be the most recent version of citoid- to get the most recent (potentially unstable) version,

Translation-server and the translator libraries are not under source control within the deploy repo. If you want to have the most up-to-date versions of these, you should install from scratch.

Configure translation-server
From the deploy directory,

Line one, change the translators directory path to the location your "translators" directory.

Run translation-server
From the deploy directory,

Configure and run citoid
From the deploy directory,

Alternatively, you can use the -c flag to specify the location of the localsettings.py file.

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:

Create localsettings.js file
Copy localsettings.js.sample to localsettings.js

Run the server
You'll first need to run translation-server; see the directions on its github page, but generally 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, try a sample query:

Install and configure Citoid user scripts
Users can make use of citoid user scripts if user javascript is enabled on your wiki using the $wgAllowUserJs option. You can also install VisualEditor gadgets on a site-wide basis.

There is currently one user script than can be used on English Wikipedia in conjunction with VisualEditor and a citoid service running on labs: CiteFromURL user script.

There is one user script for wikitext editing that can be used on English Wikipedia, also using the labs instance: Citoid Wikitext citations.

Install and configure Citoid extension
Warning: This feature is currently awaiting changes to Extension:TemplateData to work on all wikis. It currently only works on wikis using the following English Wikipedia templates: Wikipedia:Template:Citation, Wikipedia:Template:Cite web, Wikipedia:Template:Cite book, Wikipedia:Template:Cite journal, and Wikipedia:Template:Cite news.

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 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 example of a file is found here: Citoid/MediaWiki:Citoid-template-type-map.json

Related extensions and services

 * Zotero translation server -- xpcshell-based Zotero translation server, and zotero-node, an abandoned nodejs equivalent
 * Zotero field mappings, including vs. some cite templates
 * en:Category:Citation_templates
 * en:Help:Citation tools
 * VisualEditor/Citation tool
 * Restface (node.js restful api)