How to omit address field while using biblatex

Question

Its possible to omit url by

url=false

How to omit address?

I tried address=false but its not that.

Just found:

\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype=bibtex, overwrite]{
    \map{
      \step[fieldset=address, null]
      \step[fieldset=editor, null]
    }
  }
}

Answer 1

At least with the standard styles

url=no,

is not valid and will produce an error along the lines of

! Package etoolbox Error: Invalid boolean value 'no'.

url is a boolean option and can only take the values true or false (it can also appear without a value, which is equivalent to passing the value true).

Contrary to a belief held by some that pops up from time to time in various LaTeX forums and also on this site, this does not work for all fields. In fact only url, isbn (and with it issn and isrn), eprint and the related fields can be suppressed in this way. All other fields need to be gotten rid of with different methods.

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There are two things to keep in mind when dealing with address.

1. address is actually only a convenience alias for backwards compatibility with BibTeX. The field is remapped to the field location by Biber. Internally biblatex only knows location and not address.

2. biblatex distinguishes three types of fields. Name lists, lists and (proper) fields. If you want to clear a 'field' with \clear... you need to know its type and need to use the corresponding \clear... command (\clearfield, \clearlist, \clearname). location is a list. You can find out the type of each field known to biblatex by consulting the biblatex documentation, specifically §2.2 Entry Fields.

There are several ways to get rid of a field.

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My preferred way to completely get rid of address/location would be via a Biber sourcemap. Sourcemaps are executed before the field aliases are applied, so before address is remapped to location. Hence, we need to to null both address and location to make sure the address/location is gone.

\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype=bibtex, overwrite]{
    \map{
      \step[fieldset=address, null]
      \step[fieldset=location, null]
    }
  }
}

This method completely removes all traces of the field. The field will not be used by Biber to calculate any of the advanced features like name uniqueness, label... fields etc. and it will not be passed on to biblatex.

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A slightly less pretty method to remove location would involve

\DeclareListInputHandler{location}{\def\NewValue{}}

Biber will still see the field and might take it into account for its calculations, but biblatex will simply ignore it.

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Finally, you can selectively suppress the fields in citations or the bibliography with

 \AtEveryCitekey{\clearlist{location}}
 \AtEveryBibitem{\clearlist{location}}

That way the data has been processed by Biber and could have been used for label and uniqueness calculations; it is also in principle known to biblatex, but you tell it to forget about it for the time being.

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In general I would say it is good advice to ignore a field as early as possible (especially if we are talking about name or date fields), but for most intents and purposes involving location/address the three methods will give the same results.