@citestyle/bibtex

BibTeX parser and serializer. Converts between BibTeX and CSL-JSON, the standard input format for Citestyle.

Installation

npm install @citestyle/bibtex

Usage

Parse BibTeX to CSL-JSON

import { parseBibtex } from '@citestyle/bibtex'

const bibtex = `
@article{smith2024,
  author = {Smith, John and de la Cruz, Maria},
  title = {A Study of {DNA} Replication},
  journal = {Nature},
  year = {2024},
  volume = {620},
  pages = {100--108},
  doi = {10.1038/example}
}
`

const items = parseBibtex(bibtex)
console.log(items[0].title)              // "A Study of DNA Replication"
console.log(items[0].author[0].family)   // "Smith"
console.log(items[0].author[1]['non-dropping-particle']) // "de la"
console.log(items[0].page)               // "100-108"

Export CSL-JSON to BibTeX

import { exportBibtex } from '@citestyle/bibtex'

const items = [{
  id: 'smith2024',
  type: 'article-journal',
  title: 'A Study of DNA Replication',
  author: [{ family: 'Smith', given: 'John' }],
  issued: { 'date-parts': [[2024]] },
  'container-title': 'Nature',
  volume: '620',
  page: '100-108',
  DOI: '10.1038/example',
}]

const output = exportBibtex(items)
// @article{smith2024,
//   author = {Smith, John},
//   title = {A Study of DNA Replication},
//   journal = {Nature},
//   ...
// }

Convert LaTeX commands to Unicode

import { convertLatex } from '@citestyle/bibtex'

convertLatex("Universit\\\"at M\\\"unchen") // "Universitat Munchen" → "Universitat München"
convertLatex("Sch\\\"onfinkel")              // "Schonfinkel" → "Schönfinkel"
convertLatex("{\\ss}")                       // "ß"
convertLatex("\\o")                          // "ø"

Pipeline: BibTeX to formatted bibliography

import { parseBibtex } from '@citestyle/bibtex'
import { createRegistry } from '@citestyle/registry'
import * as apa from '@citestyle/styles/apa'

const bibtex = readFileSync('references.bib', 'utf-8')
const items = parseBibtex(bibtex)

const registry = createRegistry(apa)
registry.addItems(items)

const bibliography = registry.getBibliography()
bibliography.forEach(entry => console.log(entry.html))

API

`parseBibtex(str)`

Parse a BibTeX string into an array of CSL-JSON items.

Supported entry types: @article, @book, @inproceedings, @incollection, @inbook, @phdthesis, @mastersthesis, @misc, @techreport, @unpublished, @proceedings, @manual, @conference, @booklet, @online.

Features:

LaTeX accent/command conversion (120+ mappings)
@string abbreviation expansion
# concatenation of string values
Braced and quoted string values
Month abbreviations (jan-dec)
Name parsing with particles (von, de, de la) and suffixes (Jr., III)
Corporate/institutional authors via double braces ({{World Health Organization}})
Nested brace stripping

`exportBibtex(items)`

Serialize an array of CSL-JSON items to a BibTeX string. Produces clean output with en-dash page ranges and proper name formatting.

`convertLatex(str)`

Convert LaTeX accent sequences and special commands to Unicode characters. Handles \", \', \^, \~, \c, \v, and special commands like \ss, \o, \ae.