Data Unbound

The following Chickenfoot script demonstrates how to access attributes related to Zotero items. (I've run this script on both Zotero 1.0.7 and the latest named release of  Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview (1.5-sync3.5))):

// zotero_item_show_pieces.js
// code to extract elements of the first selected item
// Dec 16, 2008

var Zotero = chromeWindow.Zotero;
var ZoteroPane = chromeWindow.ZoteroPane;
var items = ZoteroPane.getSelectedItems();
var item = items[0];

// get item ID

output("item ID: " + item.id);

// get named type

var iType = item.getType();
output("type: " + Zotero.ItemTypes.getName(iType));

// figure out whether this is a top level item, note, etc.
// if not, is it a  note or attachment
output("isRegularItem: " + item.isRegularItem());
output("isAttachment: " + item.isAttachment());
output("isNote: " + item.isNote()); // or just check type == note

// get all possible fields for the type and their value
var fields = Zotero.ItemFields.getItemTypeFields(iType);
for (var i=0; i<fields.length; i++) {
  fieldName = Zotero.ItemFields.getName(fields[i]);
  fieldVal = item.getField(fieldName);
  fieldLocalName = Zotero.ItemFields.getLocalizedString(iType,fields[i])
  output(fieldLocalName + ": " + fieldVal);
}
//fields;

// get creators

var creators = item.getCreators();

for (var i=0; i<creators.length; i++) {
  // Zoteo 1.5 +
  if (creators[i].ref) {
    output (Zotero.CreatorTypes.getName(creators[i].creatorTypeID) + ": " +creators[i].ref.lastName + ", " + creators[i].ref.firstName);  }
  // Zotero 1.0.x
  else {
    output (Zotero.CreatorTypes.getName(creators[i].creatorTypeID) + ": " +creators[i].lastName + ", " + creators[i].firstName);
  }
}

// date added and date modified
output("Date Added: " + item.getField('dateAdded'));
output("Date Modified: " + item.getField('dateModified'));

// Notes -- return ids for the notes

var notes = item.getNotes();
output("notes: " + notes);

// Attachments -- there are more details to take care of
// https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/tags/1.5-sync3.5/chrome/content/zotero/xpcom/data/item.js#L3469

var attachments = item.getAttachments();
output("attachments: " + attachments);

// Tags -- Z 1.5.x has more complex structures than Z 1.0.7

var tags = item.getTags();
output("tags:");
for (var i=0; i<tags.length; i++) {
  if (tags[i].name) {
    output("|" + tags[i].name + "|");
  }
  else {
  output("|" + tags[i]['tag'] + "|");
  }
}

// Related

// https://www.zotero.org/trac/browser/extension/tags/1.0.7/chrome/content/zotero/xpcom/data_access.js#L2180

if (item.getSeeAlso) {
  var related = item.getSeeAlso();
} else if (item.relatedItems) {
  var related = item.relatedItems;
}

output("related: " + related);

// Collections -- get which collections the item belongs in.
output("collections: " + item.getCollections());

A few notes:

• Some of the conditionals in the script reflect differences in how Zotero 1.0.x and the upcoming Zotero 1.5+ Zotero object model work.
• For Zotero 1.5+,  you can learn a lot about how to access attributes related to a Zotero item by studying Zotero.Item.serialize (v 1.5-sync3.5)

We can now build on what was presented in the previous blog post: Adding items to Zotero with Chickenfoot.

The end goal is to loop through all the tabs and add Each of them as items into Zotero. So we need to figure out how to access the tabs. I would do so here by presenting a series of code fragments that you can try out using Chickenfoot and Zotero.

But let's first work through some code to manipulate tabs in Firefox, drawn from two reference documents:

• tabbrowser – MDC: a reference to the tabbrowser object
• Tabbed browser – MDC has some nice sample code, which seems to work best in Firefox 3.x, — something seemed to fail in Firefox 2.x (I should put an example here)

For example, one example of code doesn't work in 2.x — using addTab:

var tabBrowser = getTabBrowser(chromeWindow);
tabBrowser.addTab("http://yahoo.com");


Since I've had some problems using Firefox 2.x, I recommend running the following code fragments in Firefox 3.x.

First, let's get the tabbrowser object:

var tabBrowser = getTabBrowser(chromeWindow);
tabBrowser;


You can show the URL of the currently selected tab:

var tabBrowser = getTabBrowser(chromeWindow);
tabBrowser.selectedBrowser.contentWindow.location;


The following code advances selects the tab to the right of the currently tab — and loops around if needed:

var tabBrowser = getTabBrowser(chromeWindow);
tabBrowser.mTabContainer.advanceSelectedTab(1, true);


We can write out the current number of open tabs:

var tabBrowser = getTabBrowser(chromeWindow);
output(tabBrowser.browsers.length);


Here's code to select each tab in turn and output its location:

var tabBrowser = getTabBrowser(chromeWindow);
output(tabBrowser.browsers.length);
for (var i=0; i < tabBrowser.browsers.length; i++) {
  tabBrowser.mTabContainer.advanceSelectedTab(1, true);
  output(tabBrowser.selectedBrowser.contentWindow.location);
}

how to create a new collection in Zotero:

var Zotero = chromeWindow.Zotero;
var new_Collection = Zotero.Collections.add("testing");
new_Collection;


Here's code to create a new collection and add an item to it. (In my tries, the code crashes in FF 2.0.x but seems to work in FF 3.0.3):

var Zotero = chromeWindow.Zotero;
var ZoteroPane = chromeWindow.ZoteroPane;

var new_Collection = Zotero.Collections.add("testing");
var new_item = ZoteroPane.addItemFromPage(new_Collection.id);

Here's code that pulls it altogether — it loops through the tabs and adds the document of each tab to Zotero in a new collection:

var Zotero = chromeWindow.Zotero;
var ZoteroPane = chromeWindow.ZoteroPane;
var tabBrowser = getTabBrowser(chromeWindow);

var new_Collection = Zotero.Collections.add("Saved from tabs");
output(tabBrowser.browsers.length);

for (var i=0; i < tabBrowser.browsers.length; i++) {
  tabBrowser.mTabContainer.advanceSelectedTab(1, true);
  output(tabBrowser.selectedBrowser.contentWindow.location);
  var new_item = ZoteroPane.addItemFromPage(new_Collection.id);
}