Search Operations

If you are focused on data access, the first thing you will want to do will be to retrieve items from your Zotero library. Creating an in-memory search is a good start.

const s = new Zotero.Search();
s.libraryID = Zotero.Libraries.userLibraryID;

Search for items containing a specific tag

Starting with the above code, we then use the following code to retrieve items in My Library with a particular tag:

s.addCondition("tag", "is", "tag name here");
const itemIDs = await s.search();

Advanced searches

const s = new Zotero.Search();
s.libraryID = Zotero.Libraries.userLibraryID;
s.addCondition("joinMode", "any"); // joinMode defaults to 'all' as per the advanced search UI

To add the other conditions available in the advanced search UI, use the following:

s.addCondition("recursive", "true"); // equivalent of "Search subfolders" checked
s.addCondition("noChildren", "true"); // "Only show top level children
s.addCondition("includeParentsAndChildren", "true");
("Include parent and child ...");

Search by collection

To search for a collection or a saved search you need to know the ID or key:

s.addCondition("collectionID", "is", collectionID); // e.g., 52
s.addCondition("savedSearchID", "is", savedSearchID);

s.addCondition("collection", "is", collectionKey); // e.g., 'C72FDAP2'
s.addCondition("savedSearch", "is", savedSearchKey);

Search by creator

const name = "smith";
s.addCondition("creator", "contains", name);

Search by tag

To search by tag, you use the tag text:

const tagName = "something";
s.addCondition("tag", "is", tagName);

Search by other fields

The complete list of other fields available to search on is on the search fields page.

Execute the search

Once the search conditions have been set up, then it's time to execute the results:

const itemIDs = await s.search();

This returns the item IDs in the search as an array. The next thing to do is to get the Zotero items for the array of IDs:

const items = await Zotero.Items.getAsync(itemIDs);