This repository provides tools to convert bibtex files into a dictionary or into a CSV with a few selected columns extracted. It comes with two tools:

1. bibtex2dict: Convert a bibtex file or directory containing bibtex files to a pickled dictionary.
2. dict2csv: Convert a pickle file containing a BibTeX references dictionary to a CSV file.

The tool has been written for Ubuntu and tested on Python v3.5 and above but is also compatible with previous and newer versions of python3.

Requires python3, the argparse and csv packages from Python Standard Library and the bibtexparser package (available via pip):

pip install bibtexparser

The tools can be run as Python scripts, e.g.:

python3 bibtex2dict.py -b <bib> -o <outfile>

The following command-line arguments are required:

-b, --bib: Path to the BibTeX file or directory containing BibTeX files.
-o, --outfile: Path for the output pickle file. If the file already exists, it is assumed to contain a dictionary and is updated with the contents of the dictionary generated from the input bibtex/(s).

python3 dict2csv.py -d <dict> -o <outfile>

The following command-line arguments are required:

-d, --dict: Path to the pickle file containing BibTeX references dictionary.
-o, --outfile: Path for the output CSV file. If the file already exists, it is appended to.

The columns assumed in the CSV file are: Title, Year, Tags, Group, URL, Venue, Notes. Only the Title and Year (optionally, also URL) are populated. The remaining are left empty.

For working examples, execute the following on the command-line:

python3 bibtex2dict.py -b example/biblio.bib -o example/biblio.pkl
python3 dict2csv.py -d example/biblio.pkl -o example/biblio.csv

The above uses the sample input file in the example folder. A copy of the generated output files (biblio.pkl and biblio.csv) is already present in the example folder for reference.