Web Page Citation Creator

Create bibliography citations from web page URLs with automatic archival snapshot and metadata extraction.

Features

• •Wayback Machine Integration: Automatically submits URLs to the Internet Archive for preservation
• •Metadata Extraction: Extracts title, author, description, site name, and publish date from semantic HTML
• •Multiple Formats: Outputs citations in BibTeX or CSL JSON format
• •Smart Citation Keys: Generates citation keys from domain + author + year

Usage

npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts <url>
npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts <url> --format=bibtex
npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts <url> --no-wayback
npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts <url> --output=citations.bib

Metadata Extraction

The script extracts metadata from semantic HTML tags:

Title

• •<title> tag
• •Open Graph: <meta property="og:title">
• •Twitter Card: <meta name="twitter:title">
• •Standard: <meta name="title">

Author

• •<meta name="author">
• •Open Graph: <meta property="og:author"> or <meta property="article:author">
• •Twitter Card: <meta name="twitter:creator">

Description

• •<meta name="description">
• •Open Graph: <meta property="og:description">
• •Twitter Card: <meta name="twitter:description">

Site Name

• •Open Graph: <meta property="og:site_name">
• •<meta name="application-name">

Published Date

• •Open Graph: <meta property="article:published_time">
• •<meta name="publish-date"> or <meta name="date">

Arguments

• •Positional argument: URL to cite
• •--file <path>: Read URL from file (uses first line)
• •--format <format>: Output format (default: bibtex)
  • •bibtex or bib: BibTeX format
  • •csl, json, or csl-json: CSL JSON format
• •--no-wayback: Skip Wayback Machine submission (faster, but no archive)
• •--output <file>: Write output to file (default: stdout)

Output Formats

BibTeX

@online{smithexample2024,
  author = {John Smith},
  title = {Example Article Title},
  url = {https://example.com/article},
  urldate = {2024-03-15},
  year = {2024}
}

CSL JSON

[
  {
    "id": "smithexample2024",
    "type": "webpage",
    "title": "Example Article Title",
    "author": [{"literal": "John Smith"}],
    "URL": "https://example.com/article",
    "accessed": {"date-parts": [[2024, 3, 15]]},
    "archive-url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20240315123456/https://example.com/article"
  }
]

Examples

Basic citation

npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts "https://example.com/article"

Output:

@online{example2024,
  title = {Example Article Title},
  url = {https://example.com/article},
  urldate = {2024-03-15}
}

With Wayback archival

npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts "https://blog.example.com/post"

Output includes archive URL:

@online{example2024,
  title = {Blog Post Title},
  url = {https://blog.example.com/post},
  urldate = {2024-03-15},
  note = {Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240315123456/...}
}

CSL JSON format

npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts "https://docs.example.com" --format=csl

Skip archival (faster)

npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts "https://example.com" --no-wayback

Save to file

npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts "https://example.com" --output=citations.bib

Batch processing

# Create file with URLs (one per line)
echo "https://example.com/article1" > urls.txt

# Cite each URL
while read url; do
  npx tsx plugins/bib/scripts/cite-web.ts "$url" >> citations.bib
done < urls.txt

Citation Key Generation

Citation keys are automatically generated from:

1. •Domain name: example.com → example
2. •Author (if available): John Smith → smith
3. •Year: Archive date or publish date or current year

Examples:

• •https://blog.example.com/post by John Smith (2024) → smithexample2024
• •https://example.com/article (no author, 2023) → example2023

Wayback Machine Integration

By default, the script submits URLs to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for preservation:

1. •Submission: Sends URL to https://web.archive.org/save/<url>
2. •Archive URL: Extracts the permanent archive URL from response
3. •Archive Date: Records the snapshot timestamp
4. •Fallback: If submission fails, continues without archive

The archive URL is included in the citation:

• •BibTeX: In note field or custom archiveurl/archivedate fields
• •CSL JSON: In archive-url field

Skip archival with --no-wayback for faster execution when archiving isn't needed.

Error Handling

The script handles various error scenarios:

• •Invalid URL: Validates URL format before processing
• •Fetch failures: Reports HTTP errors with status codes
• •Missing metadata: Falls back to "Untitled" for missing titles
• •Wayback failures: Continues without archive if submission fails
• •No author: Omits author field if not found

Errors are written to stderr, while citations are written to stdout (or file).

Limitations

• •JavaScript-heavy sites: May not extract metadata from dynamically rendered content
• •Paywalls: Cannot access content behind authentication
• •Rate limiting: Wayback Machine may rate-limit submissions
• •No PDF support: Only HTML pages (use separate tool for PDFs)
• •Simple parsing: Uses regex matching, not full DOM parsing

For complex pages or JavaScript-rendered content, consider:

1. •Using --no-wayback to skip archival
2. •Manually editing the citation after generation
3. •Using browser developer tools to inspect metadata tags

Related Skills

• •bib-create: Create bibliography entries interactively
• •bib-read: View existing bibliography entries
• •bib-convert: Convert between bibliography formats
• •wayback-submit: Submit URLs to Wayback Machine without citation generation