Template data

This page lists every property available on zt in each template type. Use the Template Data Explorer against your own library to discover values interactively.

Item fields

All Zotero item fields are available as flat properties on zt. The canonical Zotero field name is the primary accessor. Two fields carry CSL-inspired renames (both the rename and the original work):

Common fields

Item-type-specific fields (e.g. zt.reportNumber, zt.thesisType, zt.conferenceName) are available by their Zotero canonical name. Type-specific aliases are normalized to the canonical base field: access them through the base name (e.g. blogTitle becomes zt.publicationTitle, studio becomes zt.publisher). The type-specific spelling is not available on zt.

Note and content templates

The note template (zotlit-note.liquid.md) and the content template (zotlit-content.liquid.md) share the same zt context. All item fields above are available, plus the following:

Filename template

The filename template (zotlit-filename.liquid.md) receives item-level fields only. The richer context assembled for the note body is not available.

Available: all item fields, plus zt.creators, zt.tags, and zt.collections.

Not available: zt.backlink, zt.annotations, zt.attachments, zt.relatedItems, zt.authors, zt.authorsShort, zt.notes.

zt.notePath and zt.noteLink exist but always resolve empty, because a note has no path until it is named.

Annotation template

The annotation template (zotlit-annotation.liquid.md) receives a single annotation as zt.

Citation templates

Both citation templates (zotlit-cite.liquid.md and zotlit-cite2.liquid.md) receive the same zt object with two parallel arrays:

Citation item

Each entry in zt.citations:

Cited item fields

A cited item uses the same field vocabulary as the note template, narrowed to fields both a live Zotero item and an embedded-data snapshot can supply:

Note-tier fields (key, libraryID, indexedKey, tags, dateAdded, dateModified, collections, backlink, annotations, attachments, authors, authorsShort, relatedItems, notes, notePath, noteLink) are not available on cited items.

Locator label abbreviations

labelShort maps the CSL label to its Pandoc locator term. Any label not listed (including "page") yields "p.".

Creators

zt.creators is an array of all creators for the item.

Institutional creators (Zotero fieldMode=1) set literal and have empty family/given. Creators coerce to fullName in string contexts.

zt.primaryCreatorType (string | null) identifies the primary creator role for this item type (e.g. "author" for journal articles, "director" for films).

Tags

zt.tags is an array of tag objects.

Tags coerce to name in string contexts, so {{ zt.tags \| join: ", " }} renders tag names directly.

Collections

zt.collections is an array of the Zotero collections the item belongs to, sorted by name. Trashed collections are excluded.

Collections coerce to name in string contexts. Use the collection_paths filter to render the full ancestor path joined by a separator ("/" by default).

Date format

zt.date is a parsed date object with four variants:

All variants share uniform accessors:

{{ zt.date }} outputs the string rendering from the table above. Use {{ zt.date \| date: "%Y-%m-%d" }} for explicit formatting with strftime tokens. A "text" date renders its raw text unchanged regardless of the format string.

Extra field

zt.extra is a parsed view of Zotero's free-text Extra field. When empty or absent, zt.extra is null.

Each entry in lines:

Parsing rules: Lines split on the first : or =. A key must start with a letter and contain only letters, digits, spaces, dots, hyphens, and underscores. Lines not matching become text rows (key: null). Empty values produce text rows. fields is first-wins: repeated keys use the first occurrence.

{{ zt.extra }} renders the raw field text (its toString() returns raw).

Attachments

Used in zt.attachments and zt.parentAttachment:

Related items

zt.relatedItems mirrors Zotero's Related panel, sorted by title. Each entry carries all standard item fields, creators, tags, and aliases, plus:

Related items are depth-1: their own annotations, attachments, and relatedItems are absent.

Notes

zt.notes lists an item's child notes. Each entry is link-only: the note body is not exposed.

Accessing noteLink triggers import: if the link is never rendered, no file is created. Already-imported notes link to the existing file without re-importing. See Import Zotero notes for the import workflow.

Imported note frontmatter

Each imported child-note file carries three frontmatter fields:

See also