as_bibentry: Create 'bibentry' objects from multiple sources

In cffr: Generate Citation File Format ('CFF') Metadata

Create bibentry objects from multiple sources

Description

This function creates bibentry objects from multiple metadata sources (cff objects, DESCRIPTION files and other sources). The inverse transformation from a bibentry object to cff_ref_lst can be performed with the corresponding as_cff.bibentry() method.

With toBibtex(), you can convert cff objects to BibTeX markup on the fly. See Examples.

Usage

as_bibentry(x, ...)

## Default S3 method:
as_bibentry(x, ...)

## S3 method for class 'character'
as_bibentry(x, ..., what = c("preferred", "references", "all"))

## S3 method for class ''NULL''
as_bibentry(x, ...)

## S3 method for class 'list'
as_bibentry(x, ...)

## S3 method for class 'cff'
as_bibentry(x, ..., what = c("preferred", "references", "all"))

## S3 method for class 'cff_ref_lst'
as_bibentry(x, ...)

## S3 method for class 'cff_ref'
as_bibentry(x, ...)

Arguments

x	The source used to generate the bibentry object with cffr. It can be: A missing value, which retrieves the DESCRIPTION file from your in-development package. An existing cff object created with cff(), cff_create() or as_cff(). A path to a CITATION.cff file ("CITATION.cff"). The name of an installed package ("jsonlite"). A path to a DESCRIPTION file ("DESCRIPTION").
...	Additional arguments passed to or from methods.
what	Fields to extract from a full cff object. It can be: preferred: Create a single entry with the main citation information of the package (key preferred-citation). references: Extract all entries of the references key. all: Extract both the preferred-citation and references keys. See vignette("r-cff", package = "cffr").

Details

An R bibentry object is the representation of a BibTeX entry. These objects can be converted to BibTeX markup with utils::toBibtex(), which creates an object of class Bibtex that can be printed and exported as a valid BibTeX entry.

as_bibentry() tries to map the information of the source x into a cff object and maps the metadata to BibTeX as described in vignette("bibtex-cff", package = "cffr").

Value

as_bibentry() returns a bibentry object with one or more entries.

References

Patashnik O (1988). "BIBTEXing." https://osl.ugr.es/CTAN/biblio/bibtex/base/btxdoc.pdf.

Haines R, The Ruby Citation File Format Developers (2022). "Ruby CFF Library." \Sexpr[results=rd]{tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.5281/zenodo.7294987")}. https://github.com/citation-file-format/ruby-cff.

Hernangómez D (2022). "BibTeX and CFF, a potential crosswalk." cffr vignette. https://docs.ropensci.org/cffr/articles/bibtex-cff.html.

See Also

• utils::bibentry() documents the bibentry class.

• vignette("r-cff", package = "cffr") explains how the metadata of a package is mapped to produce a cff object.

• vignette("bibtex-cff", package = "cffr") provides details about the internal mapping performed between cff objects and BibTeX markup, both cff to BibTeX and BibTeX to cff.

• utils::toBibtex() converts bibentry objects to BibTeX markup.

Work with BibTeX metadata: cff_read(), cff_read_bib_text(), cff_write_bib(), encoded_utf_to_latex()

Convert between R classes: as_cff(), as_cff_person(), cff_class

Examples

# From a `cff` object ----
cff_object <- cff()

cff_object

# A `bibentry` object.
bib <- as_bibentry(cff_object)

class(bib)

bib

# Print as BibTeX.
toBibtex(bib)

# The S3 method also supports this.
toBibtex(cff_object)

# Other sources ----
# From a CITATION.cff.

path <- system.file("examples/CITATION_complete.cff", package = "cffr")
cff_file <- as_bibentry(path)

cff_file

# For an installed package with options.
installed_package <- as_bibentry("jsonvalidate", what = "all")

installed_package

# Use a DESCRIPTION file.
path2 <- system.file("examples/DESCRIPTION_gitlab", package = "cffr")
desc_file <- as_bibentry(path2)

toBibtex(desc_file)

cffr documentation built on Aug. 24, 2026, 5:11 p.m.