Citation.js

Today I updated my GitHub repository of Citation.js. The main difference in the source files was the correction of a typo, but I updated the docs and restructured the directories as well. Not really important, but it is a nice opportunity to talk about it on my new blog (this one).

So, Citation.js is a JavaScript library to convert things like BibTeX, Wikidata JSON, and ContentMine JSON to a standardised format, and converting that standardised format to citations as in style guides like APA and Vancouver, and to BibTeX. And you know the part in Microsoft Word where you can fill in a form to get a reference list? It does that too (with the jQuery plugin).

Screenshots from the demo page

I made it so my classmates could enjoy the comfort of not having to bother with style guides, as the software does, while also being able to use a custom style, the one our school requires. In the end, I wanted to make this a public library, so I rewrote the whole program to be user-friendly (to programmers) and way more stable.

Fun things was, I made a bunch of other things in the process. A syntax highlighter for JavaScript and BibTeX, an alternative to eval for 'relaxed' JSON (JSON with syntax that works for JavaScript but not for JSON.parse()), a BibTeX parser and much more. These things made the project nice and interesting.