What is JabRef?

From JabRef official website:

JabRef is an open-sourced, cross-platform citation and reference management software. It uses BibTeX and BibLaTeX as its native formats and is therefore typically used for LaTeX.

Now let’s get to the question, for this one I really enjoyed getting in depth of the question, so if you only want the high level abstraction go to the end for the TLDR.

How does JabRef creates new articles?

JabRef implements a GUI made with JavaFX, so naturally it implements a java class called JabRefFrame.java that represents the main interface which the user interacts with.

Here the creation of an article can be triggered by a key binding, there is a lambda that is listening for when you press a key. And then a switch statement catches if the combination of keys triggers a specific behavior on the window.

In this case what we’re interested in the creation of a new article.

When the case of creating a new article is triggered the following happens:

case NEW_ARTICLE:
   new NewEntryAction(this, StandardEntryType.Article, dialogService, prefs, stateManager).execute();
   break;

As we can appreciate, a new object called NewEntryAction, this is object has the main logic to register data in JabRef.

In the previous block of code JabRef also executes the execute method from NewEntryAction. And there is a key part in the method, which is this:

if (type.isPresent()) {
   jabRefFrame.getCurrentLibraryTab().insertEntry(new BibEntry(type.get()));
}

Basically if an entry type is present (in this case is an article) it creates an object called BibEntry with the parameter Article

This is how the constructor of BibEntry looks like:

public BibEntry(EntryType type) {
   this.id = IdGenerator.next();
   setType(type);
   this.sharedBibEntryData = new SharedBibEntryData();
}

Side note:

An entry can be either added to a SharedBibEntryData that is a relational database or a ‘normal’ entry that would be a file of BIBTEX_DB extension that meets with the criteria of LaTex.

When the BibEntry instance is created it becomes part of a list of entries that are contained in an class called StateManager. it looks like this:

private final ObservableList<BibEntry> selectedEntries = FXCollections.observableArrayList();

Finally we go back to where we started. To the JabRefFrame.java file. Here a very important object is instantiated when we try to exit the program.

SaveDatabaseAction saveAction = new SaveDatabaseAction(libraryTab, Globals.prefs, Globals.entryTypesManager);
if (saveAction.save()) {
    return true;
}

The object is SaveDataBaseAction which takes care of all file writing and database insertion. We have to pay special attention to the third parameter Globals.entryTypesManager. Which is a global object that belongs to the class BibDatabaseContextthat has access to the list of BibEntries that I mentioned.

TLDR

  1. GUI catches combination of keys to create Article
  2. A new Entry of type Article is created
  3. The entry is added to an ArrayList.
  4. When the user tries to exit the GUI an option to save is presented.
  5. If the user agrees, the list of pending entries are saved on the correspondent location