Customize biblatex citations

Question

I'm exploring the capabilities of biblatex. I'm using the following example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=alphabetic,natbib=true,backend=bibtex]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Some text about \citet{A01}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}

This results in the following output:

Instead, I'd like to format citations as [Author(2001)] instead of [Auth2001], as illustrated below.

How can I achieve this customized citation? Ideally, I'd like to keep the available natbib commands (currently achieved through natbib=true) and modify my current invocations of \cite as little as possible.

Maybe you could just use an authoryear style and some modification like in Adding an AuthorYear block at the beginning of bibliography entries, Bibliography with biblatex: how to create additional labels using authoryear-style? or Modifying alphabetic biblabels with biblatex — moewe, Dec 22 '15 at 13:08

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '15 at 12:10

The comment by henrique above hinted me at the correct solution. Switching to biber and using \DeclareLabelalphaTemplate solves the problem. Note that for the case of multiple authors, maxalphanames=1 limits the number of authors that are listed in a citation to 1 and \renewcommand*{\labelalphaothers}{} omits the + that would appear in entries for multiple authors otherwise.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=alphabetic,natbib=true,backend=biber,maxalphanames=1]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\renewcommand*{\labelalphaothers}{}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A. and Bernard, B.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\DeclareLabelalphaTemplate{
  \labelelement{
    \field[final]{shorthand}
    \field{labelname}
    \field{label}
  }
  \labelelement{
    \literal{(}
  }
  \labelelement{
    \field{year}
  }
  \labelelement{
    \literal{)}
  }
}

\begin{document}

Some text about \citet{A01}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Customize biblatex citations

1 Answers1