Keep key from being regenerated

[jghauser]

Hi!

Thanks a lot for writing this great piece of software! I'm writing a plugin for Papis, a CLI bibliography management software, with the goal of allowing users to search their library using paper-qa. I wrote a custom metadata provider, which fetches all metadata from Papis (instead of crossref), which is working great.

There's one issue I'm struggling to solve, however. Papis generates what we call a ref for each document, which are what paper-qa calls bibtex_key or just key. I've tried to setting the key's value to the Papis ref, but I can't seem to get it to stick. If I understand things correctly, the problem is that the key is set elsewhere to a different value, which leads to it being set to None when DocDetails are merged, which then leads to the key being regenerated. Is there a way to tell paper-qa to keep the key I'm setting? After fiddling with things for a while I managed to set things up that the final instance of DocDetails merging has my value on both sides, but that still ends up clearing it here (since neither side is None):

paper-qa/paperqa/types.py

Lines 764 to 766 in c81e39e

	elif field == "key" and self_value is not None and other_value is not None:
	# if we have multiple keys, we wipe them and allow regeneration
	merged_data[field] = None # type: ignore[assignment]

The reason I'm trying to get this to work is that I'd like to have the key correctly set in the answers as that will allow Papis to identify the relevant documents, so that the user can, for instance, pull up more info about it or open the associated pdf. Which means that an alternative solution would be to get paper-qa to provide the ref when generating answers. Is there a way having paper-qa spit out my ref (which is in the other metadata) rather than the key?

Thanks!

[dosubot[bot]]

Hello @jghauser! I'm a bot that can help you with bugs, questions, and becoming a contributor. Let's solve this issue together!

To retain your custom key (the Papis ref) during the merging process in paper-qa, you can consider modifying the merging logic in the DocDetails class. Specifically, you can adjust the part of the code where the key is set to None during a conflict. Instead of setting it to None, you can implement a condition to retain your custom key if it matches your criteria.

Here's a general approach you might take:

1. Modify the Merging Logic: In the DocDetails merging logic, where the key is set to None during conflicts, add a condition to retain your custom key. You can check if the key from your metadata matches the desired value and keep it instead of setting it to None.

2. Override Metadata Processing: If you want paper-qa to use the ref from your metadata instead of the generated key, you might need to adjust how the metadata is processed. This could involve modifying the populate_bibtex_key_citation method to prioritize your ref over the generated key.

3. Customize Answer Generation: To have paper-qa provide your ref in the answers, you can customize the PromptSettings in the paperqa/settings.py file. Modify the context_inner field to include your ref from the other metadata instead of the default key.

By implementing these changes, you should be able to retain your custom key and have it correctly set in the answers, allowing Papis to identify the relevant documents.

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