Upgrade Storage
We’re in the process of updating the documentation for Zotero 5.0. Some documentation may be outdated in the meantime. Thanks for your understanding.
Site translators allow you to save items in Zotero with just a single click. Here you'll find the tools and documentation to get started with translator development.
Introduction to Zotero translators
Note Much of the translator documentation below is outdated and/or incomplete.
Scaffold: an IDE for Zotero translators
Scaffold is a Firefox add-on to help you write translators.
How to Write a Zotero Translator
Adam Crymble's guide to writing a simple screenscraping translator for Zotero (aka HWZT) is a comprehensive guide to writing a translator using Scaffold 1.0 and Solvent, not to mention the DOM, JavaScript, and XPath. Unfortunately
- much has changed since HWZT was written, limiting its current usability.
- HWZT is not wikified, limiting its maintainability.
How to Write a Zotero Translator++
HWZT++ wikifies HWZT, and updates it by using uplevel tools. Currently (Jul 2010) HWZT++ is useful, though further work is planned, since it currently
- is merely a list of deltas to HWZT, so one will unfortunately need to work with both resources open.
- does only the same thing that HWZT does, i.e. it uses Scaffold (2.0) to write a screenscaper.
Translator Development Outside Scaffold In Zotero >= 2.0, translators are just JavaScript files. While Scaffold can ease translator development, some prefer to work directly on the filesystem. Here's how.
Zotero Translators - The Missing Manual This missing manual aims to expand on Adam Crymble's introductory tutorial, discussing the functions in Zotero.Utilities, describing how translators can call other translators, and more.
A more technical (but fairly outdated) guide additionally covering the creation of import and export translators can be found here