#1654 MathSciNet importing breaks down

[Cong Wen]

The MathSciNet has updated their website. So the function of importing from MathSciNet currently breaks down.

[Christiaan Hofman]

As I don't have access to MathSciNet, there is probably nothing I can do to fix this.

[Cong Wen]

Maybe you could point out which part of the source code deals with processing information on various websites (MathSciNet is one of the built-in web of BibDesk Web group), I can take a look to figure out a solution.

Alternatively I could send you their current website information that you'd like to know to fix it. Please email me if convenient.

[Christiaan Hofman]

This is handled in the BDSKMathSciNetParser class.

[Cong Wen]

Great. There should be a simple solution because they kept their old version of the website with a slightly different url:

changing the line 120 of BDSKMathSciNetParser.m

NSString * URLString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"https://%@/mathscinet/search/publications.html?&fmt=bibtex&pg1=MR&s1=%@", serverName, queryString]; NSURL * bibTeXBatchDownloadURL = [NSURL URLWithString:URLString];

into

NSString * URLString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"https://%@/mathscinet/2006/mathscinet/search/publications.html?&fmt=bibtex&pg1=MR&s1=%@", serverName, queryString]; NSURL * bibTeXBatchDownloadURL = [NSURL URLWithString:URLString];

should work.

[Christiaan Hofman]

Thanks, I made the change.

Can you also test this out (after building BibDesk from source)?

[Cong Wen]

No, I am not familiar with developing with xcode. Instructions from https://sourceforge.net/p/bibdesk/wiki/BuildingFromSVN/ on how to build is a bit vague, I didn't get an excecutable app after building. Can you say more in detail the configurations?

[Christiaan Hofman]

I have put a current build to test at https://bibdesk.sourceforge.io/BibDesk.zip

[Cong Wen]

Thanks. Yes, this version works only if one use the old version MathSciNet at https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/2006/mathscinet. Should be an ad hoc solution for me.

[Cong Wen]

Dear Christiaan,

What's returned by mathscinet has changed again so BDSKMathSciNetParser.m
has to be modified again.

In this version
https://sourceforge.net/p/bibdesk/svn/HEAD/tree/trunk/bibdesk/BDSKMathSciNetParser.m
of the source code, line 117 and 118 should be modified, because the
correct query string is now of the following form

https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/api/publications/format

?formats=bib&ids=4085669,4123456,...

and what's returned by the query is now a json list of the following form

[{"paperId":4624811,"ams":null,"bib":"@book {MR4624811,\n    AUTHOR =

{Chow, Bennett},\n TITLE = {Ricci solitons in low dimensions},\n
SERIES = {Graduate Studies in Mathematics},\n VOLUME = {235},\n
PUBLISHER = {American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI},\n YEAR =
{[2023] \copyright 2023},\n PAGES = {xvi+339},\n ISBN =
{[9781470474287]; [9781470475239]; [9781470475222]},\n MRCLASS = {53E20
(30F20 53-02 53C25 58-02)},\n MRNUMBER = {4624811},\nMRREVIEWER =
{Xiaolong\ Li},\n DOI = {10.1090/gsm/235},\n URL = {
https://doi.org/10.1090/gsm/235},\n}","tex":null,"end":null}]

rather than a html file, so the code parsing the result should be modified
as well. I think this provides enough information for the fix, e.g., using
an agentic coding tool, thank you.

Best,
Cong

[Christiaan Hofman]

Thanks, I'll update the code in bibdesk according to your description. Extracting the bibtex from the json should also be easy, as Foundation has a built-in JSON parser.