BBL to BIB with BibDesk

BibDesk manages my bibliography, just like iTunes manages my music. I have a single iTunes library, and I also have only a single master bibliography. However, when writing a paper, I want to create a new bib file with only the publications cited in the paper. BibTeX nicely creates a bibliographic reference file (*.bbl), but I want a bibliography file (*.bib) in order to be able to open the paper related publications with BibDesk. So, what I needed was a tool to convert the bbl file into a bib file. Fortunately, I found everything for that on my machine: AppleScript, grep, sed and, of course, BibDesk. I wrote a small script which simply creates a new bib file using a source bib file and a selected bbl file. Simply install the script listed below to your script folder (~/Library/Scripts) and name it "Create BIB from BBL.scpt" . Open your master bib file with BibDesk, then select a bbl file and activate the script(from the script menu in the menu bar). It will automatically create a new bib file in the folder of the bbl file, with the same name as the original bbl file (but with the extension bib).

-- Creates a new bib-file from an bbl-file using BibDesk 
-- (C) 2010 Jens von Pilgrim
-- Version: 1.1, 20100615

tell application "Finder"
 set selectedItems to the selection
end tell

if ((count of selectedItems) = 0) then
 display dialog "Please select at least one bbl file" buttons {"OK"}
 return
end if

-- retrieve master bib file
set sourceDoc to ""
tell application "BibDesk"
 if (count of documents) = 0 then
  display dialog "Please open the source bibliography with BibDesk" buttons {"OK"}
  return
 end if
 if (count of documents) > 1 then
  set listOfNames to {} as list
  repeat with doc in documents
   set listOfNames to listOfNames & name of doc
  end repeat
  set selected to (choose from list listOfNames) as string
  repeat with i from 1 to the count of documents
   set doc to (item i of documents)
   set strDocName to name of doc as string
   if (strDocName is equal to selected) then
    set sourceDoc to document i
    log "source doc set"
   end if
  end repeat
  if sourceDoc is equal to "" then
   return
  end if
 else
  set sourceDoc to document 1
 end if
end tell

-- log "copy items from master bib file"

-- convert all selected bbl files
repeat with theItem in selectedItems
 
 set theFile to theItem as alias
 set posixpath to POSIX path of theFile
 
 
 
 if (offset of ".bbl" in posixpath) > 0 then
  set destPosixpath to (my rename(posixpath, "bbl", "bib"))
  set destFile to POSIX file destPosixpath
  
  tell application "Finder"
   if (exists destFile) then
    set rep to display dialog "File " & destFile & " already exists. Overwrite?" buttons {"Yes", "No"}
    set skip to (button returned of rep = "No")
   else
    set skip to false
   end if
  end tell
  
  if (not skip) then
   
   -- log "examine bbl file " & quoted form of posixpath
   
   -- actually, this is the most important line:
     
   set allCites to do shell script "grep -E \"\\\\\\\\bibitem[:space:]*(\\[[^]]*\\])?[:space:]*{([^}]*)}\" " & (quoted form of posixpath) & " | sed -E \"s/\\\\\\\\bibitem[:space:]*(\\[[^]]*\\])?[:space:]*{([^}]*)}/\\2/\""
   
   set numberOfItems to length of paragraphs of allCites
   if numberOfItems = 0 then
    display dialog "No bibitems found in " & posixpath & ", maybe the file does not contain any bibitems or the search pattern does not recognize your file format." buttons {"Too bad."}
   else
    set numberOfMissedItems to 0
    set missedItems to ""
    tell application "BibDesk"
     set destDoc to make new document
     repeat with cite in paragraphs of allCites
      set bibs to search sourceDoc for cite
      set bFound to false
      repeat with bib in bibs
       set strFoundKey to cite key of bib as string
       set strCite to cite as string
       if strFoundKey is equal to strCite then
        --  log strCite & " found, add to new bib"
        set newBib to make new publication at end of publications of destDoc
        duplicate bib to newBib
        set bFound to true
       end if
      end repeat
      if not bFound then
       set numberOfMissedItems to numberOfMissedItems + 1
       if (numberOfMissedItems > 1) then
        set missedItems to missedItems & ", "
       end if
       set missedItems to missedItems & cite
      end if
     end repeat
     save destDoc in destFile
    end tell
    if numberOfMissedItems > 0 then
     display dialog "Did not found  " & numberOfMissedItems & " out of " & numberOfItems & " items: " & missedItems & "." buttons {"Uups"}
    end if
   end if
  end if
 else
  display dialog "Can only extract bib entries from BBL file, was " & posixpath
 end if
end repeat

-- this sub-routine just comes up with the new name
on rename(item_name, item_ext, new_extension)
 set the trimmed_name to text 1 thru -((length of item_ext) + 2) of the item_name
 set target_name to (the trimmed_name & "." & new_extension) as string
 return the target_name
end rename

If you don't have BibDesk, you might want to have a look at Michael Zhang's Perl Script. Instead of parsing the bbl file, Zhang's script parses the latex source. I prefer parsing the bbl file, as sometimes I use a whole bunch of latex sources, and BibTeX is quite good in gathering all citations into a single bbl file. You may also want to read the comments to Zhang's post for other solutions. If you don't have a master bib file, you may look at http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=makebib. There's a perl scrip provided reconstructing a bib file from a bbl file only. Update 2010-06-15: I updated the script as some BBL files were not recognized. If the script doesn't work, you may have a look at your BBL file. At the moment, the script searches for bibitems like "\bibitem{key}" or "\bibitem[abbr]{key}".

BibDesk manages my bibliography, just like iTunes manages my music. I have a single iTunes library, and I also have only a single master bibliography. However, when writing a paper, I want to create a new bib file with only the publications cited in the paper. BibTeX nicely creates a bibliographic reference file (*.bbl), but I want a bibliography file (*.bib) in order to be able to open the paper related publications with BibDesk. So, what I needed was a tool to convert the bbl file into a bib file. Fortunately, I found everything for that on my machine: AppleScript, grep, sed and, of course, BibDesk. I wrote a small script which simply creates a new bib file using a source bib file and a selected bbl file. Simply install the script listed below to your script folder (~/Library/Scripts) and name it "Create BIB from BBL.scpt" . Open your master bib file with BibDesk, then select a bbl file and activate the script(from the script menu in the menu bar). It will automatically create a new bib file in the folder of the bbl file, with the same name as the original bbl file (but with the extension bib).

-- Creates a new bib-file from an bbl-file using BibDesk 
-- (C) 2010 Jens von Pilgrim
-- Version: 1.1, 20100615

tell application "Finder"
 set selectedItems to the selection
end tell

if ((count of selectedItems) = 0) then
 display dialog "Please select at least one bbl file" buttons {"OK"}
 return
end if

-- retrieve master bib file
set sourceDoc to ""
tell application "BibDesk"
 if (count of documents) = 0 then
  display dialog "Please open the source bibliography with BibDesk" buttons {"OK"}
  return
 end if
 if (count of documents) > 1 then
  set listOfNames to {} as list
  repeat with doc in documents
   set listOfNames to listOfNames & name of doc
  end repeat
  set selected to (choose from list listOfNames) as string
  repeat with i from 1 to the count of documents
   set doc to (item i of documents)
   set strDocName to name of doc as string
   if (strDocName is equal to selected) then
    set sourceDoc to document i
    log "source doc set"
   end if
  end repeat
  if sourceDoc is equal to "" then
   return
  end if
 else
  set sourceDoc to document 1
 end if
end tell

-- log "copy items from master bib file"

-- convert all selected bbl files
repeat with theItem in selectedItems
 
 set theFile to theItem as alias
 set posixpath to POSIX path of theFile
 
 
 
 if (offset of ".bbl" in posixpath) > 0 then
  set destPosixpath to (my rename(posixpath, "bbl", "bib"))
  set destFile to POSIX file destPosixpath
  
  tell application "Finder"
   if (exists destFile) then
    set rep to display dialog "File " & destFile & " already exists. Overwrite?" buttons {"Yes", "No"}
    set skip to (button returned of rep = "No")
   else
    set skip to false
   end if
  end tell
  
  if (not skip) then
   
   -- log "examine bbl file " & quoted form of posixpath
   
   -- actually, this is the most important line:
     
   set allCites to do shell script "grep -E \"\\\\\\\\bibitem[:space:]*(\\[[^]]*\\])?[:space:]*{([^}]*)}\" " & (quoted form of posixpath) & " | sed -E \"s/\\\\\\\\bibitem[:space:]*(\\[[^]]*\\])?[:space:]*{([^}]*)}/\\2/\""
   
   set numberOfItems to length of paragraphs of allCites
   if numberOfItems = 0 then
    display dialog "No bibitems found in " & posixpath & ", maybe the file does not contain any bibitems or the search pattern does not recognize your file format." buttons {"Too bad."}
   else
    set numberOfMissedItems to 0
    set missedItems to ""
    tell application "BibDesk"
     set destDoc to make new document
     repeat with cite in paragraphs of allCites
      set bibs to search sourceDoc for cite
      set bFound to false
      repeat with bib in bibs
       set strFoundKey to cite key of bib as string
       set strCite to cite as string
       if strFoundKey is equal to strCite then
        --  log strCite & " found, add to new bib"
        set newBib to make new publication at end of publications of destDoc
        duplicate bib to newBib
        set bFound to true
       end if
      end repeat
      if not bFound then
       set numberOfMissedItems to numberOfMissedItems + 1
       if (numberOfMissedItems > 1) then
        set missedItems to missedItems & ", "
       end if
       set missedItems to missedItems & cite
      end if
     end repeat
     save destDoc in destFile
    end tell
    if numberOfMissedItems > 0 then
     display dialog "Did not found  " & numberOfMissedItems & " out of " & numberOfItems & " items: " & missedItems & "." buttons {"Uups"}
    end if
   end if
  end if
 else
  display dialog "Can only extract bib entries from BBL file, was " & posixpath
 end if
end repeat

-- this sub-routine just comes up with the new name
on rename(item_name, item_ext, new_extension)
 set the trimmed_name to text 1 thru -((length of item_ext) + 2) of the item_name
 set target_name to (the trimmed_name & "." & new_extension) as string
 return the target_name
end rename

If you don't have BibDesk, you might want to have a look at Michael Zhang's Perl Script. Instead of parsing the bbl file, Zhang's script parses the latex source. I prefer parsing the bbl file, as sometimes I use a whole bunch of latex sources, and BibTeX is quite good in gathering all citations into a single bbl file. You may also want to read the comments to Zhang's post for other solutions. If you don't have a master bib file, you may look at http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=makebib. There's a perl scrip provided reconstructing a bib file from a bbl file only. Update 2010-06-15: I updated the script as some BBL files were not recognized. If the script doesn't work, you may have a look at your BBL file. At the moment, the script searches for bibitems like "\bibitem{key}" or "\bibitem[abbr]{key}".

BBL to BIB with BibDesk