bib2hugoac - a python script that takes a .bib file and generates a directory full of .md files for use with the Hugo Academic theme

bib2hugoac.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""
This script takes a BibTeX .bib file and outputs a series of .md files for use
in the Academic theme for Hugo, a general-purpose, static-site generating web
framework. Each file incorporates the data for a single publication.

Written for and tested using python 3.6.1

Requires: bibtexparser

Copyright (C) 2017 Mark Coster
"""

import argparse
import os

import bibtexparser
from bibtexparser.bparser import BibTexParser
from bibtexparser.customization import *


def main():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument("bib_file", help="BibTeXfile to convert")
    parser.add_argument('dir', nargs='?', default='publication',
                        help="output directory")
    parser.add_argument("-s", "--selected", help="publications 'selected = true'",
                        action="store_true")
    parser.add_argument("-v", "--verbose", help="increase output verbosity",
                        action="store_true")
    args = parser.parse_args()

    if args.verbose:
        print("Verbosity turned on")
        print("Opening {}".format(args.bib_file))

    try:
        with open(args.bib_file) as bib_file:
            parser = BibTexParser()
            parser.customization = customizations
            bib_data = bibtexparser.load(bib_file, parser=parser)
    except IOError:
        print('There was a problem opening the file.')

    if not os.path.exists(args.dir):
        if args.verbose:
            print("Creating directory '{}'".format(args.dir))
        os.makedirs(args.dir)
    os.chdir(args.dir)

    for index, entry in enumerate(bib_data.entries):
        if args.verbose:
            print("Making entry {0}: {1}".format(index + 1, entry['ID']))
        if entry['ENTRYTYPE'] != 'article':
            continue
        info = ['+++']
        abstract_clean = entry['abstract'].replace('"', '\\"')
        info.append('abstract = "{}"'.format(abstract_clean))
        info.append('abstract_short = "{}"'.format(abstract_clean))
        authors = []
        for author in entry['author']:
            authors.append('"{}"'.format(author))
        info.append('authors = [{}]'.format(', '.join(authors)))
        info.append('date = "{}-01-01"'.format(entry['year']))
        info.append('image_preview = ""')
        info.append('math = true')
        info.append('publication_types = ["2"]')
        journal_name = entry['journal']['name'].replace('\\', '')
        info.append('publication = "{}"'.format(journal_name))
        if 'volume' in entry:
            volume = entry['volume'] + ', '
        else:
            volume = ''
        info.append('publication_short = "{journal} {year}, {vol}{pages}"'.format(
            journal=journal_name,
            year=entry['year'],
            vol=volume,
            pages=entry['pages']))
        info.append('selected = {}'.format(str(args.selected).lower()))
        info.append('title = "{}"'.format(entry['title']))
        info.append('\n\n+++')
        pub_info = '\n'.join(info)
        file_name = entry['ID'] + '.md'

        try:
            if args.verbose:
                print("Saving '{}'".format(file_name))
            with open(file_name, 'w') as pub_file:
                pub_file.write(pub_info)
        except IOError:
            print('There was a problem writing to the file.')


def customizations(record):
    """Use some functions delivered by the library

    :param record: a record
    :returns: -- customized record
    """
    record = type(record)
    record = author(record)
    record = editor(record)
    record = journal(record)
    record = keyword(record)
    record = link(record)
    record = doi(record)
    record = convert_to_unicode(record)
    record = abstract(record)
    record = pages(record)
    return record


def abstract(record):
    """
    Clean abstract string.

    :param record: a record
    :type record: dict
    :return: dict -- the modified record
    """
    record['abstract'] = record['abstract'].strip(' [on SciFinder(R)]')
    return record


def pages(record):
    """
    Convert double hyphen page range to single hyphen,
    eg. '4703--4705' --> '4703-4705'

    :param record: a record
    :type record: dict
    :return: dict -- the modified record
    """
    record['pages'] = record['pages'].replace('--', '-')
    return record


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

I'm pretty new to this too, but it looks like you're using python 2.7, whereas I wrote the script and tested it using python 3.6. If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend using virtual environments to do anything with python. Let me know how it goes and if you're still having problems, I'll look into it further!
@arturgower @EBucksJeff

I had a similar problem and it was because some of my bib entries lacked entries for page numbers (lines 136 and 80 in the gist assumes they are present). A few extra if statements will do the trick.