helm-bibtex and Zotero with better-bibtex -- Cannot find PDF

Question

Using org-ref and helm-bibtex I can insert a reference into my org file that will be displayed as a link in the shape of cite:kaufmann_eigensolver_2007. I can hit RET and get a menu from helm-bibtex with common actions on that citation.

The goal

What I'd like is to be able to directly open the PDF given in the file field of the bibtex entry (supplied by Zotero).

The problem

When picking "Open PDF" in the helm-bibtex menu I get the message "no pdf found for <key>"

My configuration

I have set up better-bibtex to export by Zotero library to a bib file. The entries look like this:

@incollection{kaufmann_eigensolver_2007,
  title = {Eigensolver {{Methods}} for {{Progressive Multidimensional Scaling}} of {{Large Data}}},
  ...,
  file = {C\:\\Users\\Ben\\Zotero\\storage\\Q2YBABVH\\Brandes and Pich - 2007 - Eigensolver Methods for Progressive Multidimension.pdf},
  ...
}

My config looks like this

  ;; configure bibtex layer
  (setq org-ref-default-bibliography '("/Users/Ben/Dropbox/Library.bib")
        org-ref-bibliography-notes "/Users/Ben/Dropbox/org/org-ref-notes.org")


  (setq bibtex-completion-bibliograph "/Users/Ben/Dropbox/Library.bib")
  (setq bibtex-completion-pdf-field "file")
  (setq bibtex-completion-pdf-open-function
        (lambda (fpath)
          (debug)
          (start-process "open" "*open*" "open" fpath)))

What I've tried

• Changing the PDF file name to accomodate the bibtex key (kaufmann_eigensolver_2007.pdf)
• Manually editing the file field and try different variations of double/single/forward/backward slashes
• Some basic debugging but I have to say im pretty lust on how to use debug in emacs.
• Looking at the source code of the relevant function of helm-bibtex but I cant really make sense of it.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. In my case, it was fixed by setting org-ref-get-filename-function:

(setq org-ref-get-pdf-filename-function
      (lambda (key) (car (bibtex-completion-find-pdf key))))

Answer 2

You seem to be on a MAC, but the PDF key in the bibtex contains a Windows path. Maybe Zotero should export differently?

Not sure if this helps but I setup the variable

(setq bibtex-completion-library-path "~/cloud/Papers/")

to the path which contains all my papers. And then the bibtex entries only have the name of the file (with no path) in them.

Given your setup you could debug by calling both

(bibtex-completion-pdf-open-function <fullpath>)

(bibtex-completion-pdf-open-function (concat <dirpath> <pdfname>))

trying to substitute in the appropriate values.

BTW I don't think you need to change the PDF open function unless you have specific reasons to do so.