Item creation failing

[urschrei]

Item creation failing

[urschrei]

Hmmm. Has item creation worked for you previously? (also, I removed the API key from your posted output)

[avram]

It did when I first started testing out pyzotero, and collection deletion certainly worked. I'll experiment some more and try to pin this down.

And thanks for removing the key from the output here-- I remembered to catch it in the gist.

[avram]

Basic creation works:

> > > server = zotero.Zotero('5770', '[key]')
> > > server
> > > <pyzotero.zotero.Zotero object at 0xb781680c>
> > > zitem = server.item_template("manuscript")
> > > zitem>>> zitem
> > > {u'numPages': '', u'itemType': u'manuscript', u'language': '', u'title': '', u'url': '', u'manuscriptType': '', u'rights': '', u'libraryCatalog': '', u'shortTitle': '', u'extra': '', u'accessDate': '', u'tags': [], u'place': '', u'notes': [], u'date': '', u'abstractNote': '', u'creators': [{u'lastName': '', u'creatorType': u'author', u'firstName': ''}], u'archiveLocation': '', u'archive': '', u'callNumber': ''}
> > > zitem["title"] = "ну?"
> > > zitem
> > > {u'numPages': '', u'itemType': u'manuscript', u'language': '', u'title': '\xd0\xbd\xd1\x83?', u'url': '', u'manuscriptType': '', u'rights': '', u'libraryCatalog': '', u'shortTitle': '', u'extra': '', u'accessDate': '', u'tags': [], u'place': '', u'notes': [], u'date': '', u'abstractNote': '', u'creators': [{u'lastName': '', u'creatorType': u'author', u'firstName': ''}], u'archiveLocation': '', u'archive': '', u'callNumber': ''}
> > > out = server.create_items([zitem])
> > > out
> > > [{u'itemType': u'manuscript', u'extra': u'', u'abstractNote': u'', u'archive': u'', u'title': u'\u043d\u0443?', u'archiveLocation': u'', u'etag': u'327ebd24f3a2d83bb8f820fdfc0cdacc', u'updated': 'Sat, 16 Jul 2011 11:29:34 MSK', u'tags': [], u'accessDate': u'', u'manuscriptType': u'', u'libraryCatalog': u'', u'callNumber': u'', u'key': u'QCWW78ZM', u'date': u'', u'numPages': u'', u'group_id': u'5770', u'shortTitle': u'', u'language': u'', u'rights': u'', u'url': u'', u'place': u'', u'creators': []}]
> > > 
> > > ```
> > > ```

[urschrei]

It's an issue in the type field. When I removed yours ("\u0440\u0443\u043a\u043e\u043f\u0438\u0441\u044c"), I was able to create the item. So it seems the server is fussy about what it accepts in that field.

[avram]

This is, as I expected, just a mistake on my part. The proper field for type on manuscripts is "manuscriptType" (ridiculous but true).

Would it be possible for pyzotero to do integrity checks, since it has the item template and can presumably can anticipate such errors (especially since Zotero's error seems to be pretty opaque)?

[urschrei]

Hmmm. I'll have to think about how best to do it. I'm not currently storing the item-creation templates, but I suppose I can do that, check the user-created dicts, and raise an error if there are unknown fields in the item.

[avram]

The integrity check could be made optional, if you think it will add unnecessary overhead. Maybe a new check_fields method?

The receiving API is pretty strict about things like this, and people will frequently trip up on field names, creator roles, and the like.

[urschrei]

OK, I have this working. But I've now realised that there are fields missing from the data returned by a call to /itemFields (notes, tags, itemType, and creators), so an update will have to wait a little while, until I figure out whether they've been omitted on purpose.

[avram]

I think that that's because the item types and creator types are returned by different calls: http://www.zotero.org/support/dev/server_api/write_api#get_valid_creator_types_for_an_item_type

[urschrei]

Yes, but I'm not sure that behaviour is correct, since creators is a valid item field. I'll ask on zotero-dev shortly.

[avram]

We could just consider those fields OK for all item types, since they are universal. I'm glad to work on this and test it myself, if you want to commit what you've written so far.

[urschrei]

There's now a check_items() method: 1187a40

You can pass it a list of one or more dicts, and it'll compare them to the output of a call to item_fields(), raising a KeyError detailing the unknown keys if any are found.

[avram]

Looks like you've added it to the docs as check_keys...

I'll try adding this to my script.

[urschrei]

Fixed now. You'll have to pip install directly from the dev branch of the repo, btw. I'll merge it into master and upload it to pypi once I'm happy that it's behaving as it should.

[avram]

This works for me! Closing the ticket, since it wasn't a bug in pyzotero to begin with, and now I have a way to avoid it.