# CSL parser in Julia – Any approaches yet | who would maybe join?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csl-parser-in-julia-any-approaches-yet-who-would-maybe-join/57451>\
**Category:** Community\
**Created:** [March 18, 2021, 9:01am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csl-parser-in-julia-any-approaches-yet-who-would-maybe-join/57451 "2021-03-18T09:01:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kellertuer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kellertuer/32/220707_2.png) [@kellertuer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kellertuer)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 9:01am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csl-parser-in-julia-any-approaches-yet-who-would-maybe-join/57451/1 "2021-03-18T09:01:38Z")

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Continuing the discussion from [State of the Literature/References](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/state-of-the-literature-references/51807/7):

I am thinking about having a CSL parser package (see [https://citationstyles.org/](https://citationstyles.org/) ) in Julia. Are there are approaches to this already? Would someone be interested to join?

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**Author:** ![spraetor](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/spraetor/32/221028_2.png) [@spraetor](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/spraetor)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 5:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csl-parser-in-julia-any-approaches-yet-who-would-maybe-join/57451/2 "2026-03-01T17:02:13Z")

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Hi @kellertuer. While your post is already quiet old, I just recently stumbled over it when searching for bibliography processing tools in Julia. I am new to the language and currently playing around with some first projects. One project ([BibFormatter.jl](https://github.com/spraetor/BibFormatter.jl)) is about translating bibtex .bst files, which describe and implement the bibliography style using a stack-based language, into a julia processible formatter. This is based on the bib entries generated by BibParser.jl. Note that this is still very early development. But I noticed the common patterns in various bst files about puctuation, abbreviations, single-multiple names etc. All what the CSL specification seems to be about. I am not an expert in this but it seems to be the better approach than writing a parser for bst files. The bst style is just what I knew from working with Latex and bibtex.

After these years, have you found or made any attempt to write a parser/formatter based on CSL specification?

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**Author:** ![kellertuer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/kellertuer/32/220707_2.png) [@kellertuer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/kellertuer)\
**Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 12:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/csl-parser-in-julia-any-approaches-yet-who-would-maybe-join/57451/3 "2026-03-02T00:53:28Z")

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Hi and welcome to the Julia community!

As you might see here, there was never any response, I concluded, there is probably no need / interest – and I myself focussed further on packages in the JuliaManifold ecosystem. These do use for example DocumenterCitations.jl a lot, so both a nice formatting addons. It would for example also be nice to have something to parse BibLaTeX instead of BibTeX since nearly all my own bibliographies are now BibLaTeX. This is also a [pending issue](https://github.com/Humans-of-Julia/BibParser.jl/issues/8) with the BibParser.jl

I think `.bst` files are by now a bit old-school and very “LaTeX-focussed” and CSL is maybe the more modern approach. I am not aware of any packages approaching this, no.