knitr and biblatex

Question

I'd like to create a PDF report with knitr with LaTeX-code in RStudio with biblatex for citations. However, the in-text-citations are always undefined and no bibliography is printed. The same bibliography works perfectly with a pure .tex-document stored in the same folder and containing the same citations, same path to the .bib-file etc. However, as for all references (also with hyperref) I have to compile twice. I thought this might be the problem with knitr (that the compilation is run only once), but the hyperref-references to figures work well. Any idea what might go wrong with the bibliography when using knitr and how I can solve the problem?

MWE:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear-comp, maxnames=1, bibencoding=utf8, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\bibliography{ZoteroOutput.bib}

\begin{document}

According to the literature \parencite{gonzalez2003} we can assume...

\printbibliography

\end{document}

From the log-file:

Package biblatex Warning: Please (re)run Biber on the file:
(biblatex)                mwe
(biblatex)                and rerun LaTeX afterwards.

Answer 1

RStudio allows you to use a custom LaTeX program with that

• you can set up a script that does the proper processing
• there are automatic solutions for this, e.g. latexmk, like so: Sys.setenv(RSTUDIO_PDFLATEX = "/Library/TeX/texbin/latexmk") (or whatever you path may be)

Another option is that RStudio allows to specify build tools for a project. This may be

• either a Makefile
• or again a custom script

In addition, you may want to tell the RStudio developers about the need to have a bibliography in Sweave documents. You can tell them that I'd need it, too :-)

Answer 2

It is actually really easy to produce a PDF with knitr with LaTeX-code in RStudio with biblatex for citations.

You have to use the option bib_engine = "biber" from the package tinytex::latexmk within knitr::knit2pdf.

Just like here: knitr::knit2pdf(file.Rnw, bib_engine = "biber")

Answer 3

I think that the problem is in your backend, because Rstudio uses texi2dvi to write pdf and then it does not know about biber.

Try to change:

\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}

with

\usepackage[backend=bibtex]{biblatex}

in the preamble.

Normally this work.

Answer 4

Even though the question was asked long ago, any reader in the future might find this useful:

http://texblog.org/2013/08/20/rknitr-automatic-bibliography-generation-with-biblatex-in-rstudio/

Answer 5

This kinda works when I press the compile button twice. It is just an ugly system call to biber.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{Doe,author={John Doe},title={Title}}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}

Test \cite{Doe}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

<<biber>>=
system(paste("biber", sub("\\.Rnw$", "", current_input())))
@

Answer 6

The standard procedure for getting citations to work properly is that you have to:

1) Run LaTeX

2) Run BibTex

3) Run LaTeX

4) Run LaTeX

One option is to use the command texify, others use a makefile. I am not entirely sure about what knitr runs, but probably it does not run the sequence enough. Personally, I use Emacs with ESS, combined with AuCTeX; it really works well for me.

P.S. I don't think you need to specify that it's a .bib file.

Answer 7

It's an old question, which has no standard solution yet which I know of. (If I am wrong I would be pleased to be pointed to a better solution.)

I got the following to work with rstudio, knitr, biblatex, and biber. It probably only works for linux, but could possibly be adapted to other systems.

1. create a wrapper file with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/bash /usr/bin/latexmk -pv- -quiet -pdf -xelatex $@

Let's assume, you called the file ~/bin/rstudiolatex.sh. Make sure to use the correct path to bash which might be /bin/bash on your machine. The command line options to latexmk could be shortened I guess.

2. Make the file (~/bin/rstudiolatex) executable.

3. add the following line to the R startup ~/.Rprofile:

Sys.setenv(RSTUDIO_PDFLATEX = "/your/path/to/rstudiolatex.sh")

Make sure to insert your proper path to rstudiolatex.sh.