Custom bibtex entry and and citation formating

Question

I would like to create a custom BibTeX(like) entry, say @businesscard with a name a phone number and an age. I imagine it looks something like this

@buisinesscard{Mister_Boss_Sir,
name = {Boss Sir},
phonenumber = {1234567890},
age = {61}}
@buisinesscard{Mrs_Boss_lady,
name = {Boss Lady},
phonenumber = {0987654321},
age = {35}}

And then when I cite the business card (or refer to it in some way) I would like a businesscard to show in the document

so the following code

\begin{document}
first text
\cite(Mr_Boss_Sir)
second text
\end{document}

Would yield the following result:

Is there any way to do this? It doesn't have to involve bibtex or cite really, just anyway to make bundles of information and format the information in a bundle would be great!

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 24 '20 at 12:56

This can be done with biblatex, but it requires some machinery.

Ulrike Fischer wrote a TUGBoat article about using biblatex for 'non-standard' applications, where she does something similar. In Using BibLaTeX for D&D I show an example of using biblatex for character data in D&D. From there it is only a small step to a business card.

The details of creating a new entry type and using it are explained in How can I create entirely new data types with BibLaTeX/Biber?. With the help of that answer it should be possible to understand what happens in the following code.

Roughly speaking, you need to define a new entry type with new fields and make them known to Biber via the datamodel (.dbx) file.

Then it is only a matter of printing the available data in a nice format. Specifically we define a new citation command that prints a tcolorbox with the business card details.

\begin{filecontents}{businesscard.dbx}
\DeclareDatamodelEntrytypes{businesscard}
\DeclareDatamodelFields[type=field,datatype=literal]{
  phonenumber,
}
\DeclareDatamodelFields[type=list, datatype=name]{
  name,
}
\DeclareDatamodelFields[type=field, datatype=integer]{
  age,
}
\DeclareDatamodelEntryfields[businesscard]{
  name,
  phonenumber,
  age,
}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass[english]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[datamodel=businesscard, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\usepackage{tcolorbox}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\NewBibliographyString{name,phonenumber,age}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{
  name        = {name},
  phonenumber = {phonenumber},
  age         = {age},
}
\DeclareCiteCommand{\businesscite}
  {}
  {\usebibmacro{businesscite}}
  {}
  {}
\DeclareFieldFormat{businesscard}{%
  \begin{tcolorbox}
  #1
  \end{tcolorbox}}
\DeclareNameWrapperFormat{name}{\bibstring{name}\addcolon\space#1}
\DeclareFieldFormat{age}{\bibstring{age}\addcolon\space#1}
\DeclareFieldFormat{phonenumber}{\bibstring{phonenumber}\addcolon\space#1}
\newbibmacro{businesscite}{%
  \printtext[businesscard]{%
    \printnames{name}%
    \setunit{\par}%
    \printfield{phonenumber}%
    \setunit{\par}%
    \printfield{age}%
  }%
}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@businesscard{Mister_Boss_Sir,
  name        = {Boss Sir},
  phonenumber = {1234567890},
  age         = {61},
}
@businesscard{Mrs_Boss_lady,
  name        = {Boss Lady},
  phonenumber = {0987654321},
  age         = {35},
}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\businesscite{Mister_Boss_Sir}
\businesscite{Mrs_Boss_lady}
\end{document}

Custom bibtex entry and and citation formating

1 Answers1