• Identifies the YAML section at the start of all markdown files in a directory (recursive)
• Creates a new bibtex/biblatex file with the parsed references

The motivation behind this tool is so that the user can build their own personal notes on each article/text they read on a minimally formatted document such as markdown. Then, they can quickly generate a .bib file from all the articles they have read. The resulting .bib file can then be used as needed e.g. to insert citations in a LaTeX-based dissertation/document.

Below is an imaginary example. The tool recognizes the following fields and turns them to .bib format:

---
title: Testing
author: Test McTest and Test O'Test
journal: Test Journal
year: 1901
volume: 1
number: 1
pages: 500-550 
---

• title: The title of the work
• author: the authors, using their full name First [Middle] Last, with each author separated by and
• journal: The journal where it was published the work
• year: The year of publication
• volume: the volume number of the journal where it was published. Usually the 31 in the AMA-formatted citation: ... 2022;31(4):324-328
• number: the issue of the journal where it was published. Usually the 4 in the AMA-formatted citation: ... 2022;31(4):324-328. The reason for this is that in the .bib format issue has a different meaning
• pages: the page number in the format int, or int-int. If the journal reports the article number instead of pages, this number comes here. For journals with page number, it's usually the 324-328 in the AMA formatted citation: ... 2022;31(4):324-328 For journals with article number, it's Usually the 123 in the AMA formatted citation: ... 2022;31(4):123

Note: Outside of building this repo yourself, currently I only supply a binary for Ubuntu 20 LTS.

To use this tool, simply:

1. download the latest release binary in the release page
2. run the binary $ ./yaml-front-matter-to-bib [OPTIONS] --input-directory <INPUT_DIRECTORY>