Citing author inline and year in footnote using biblatex

Question

I've been looking around and note found an answer to this question, which surprises me given the style is somewhat common.

I just switched over to biblatex because some journals in my field use footnotes instead of inline citations, and it can easily switch between the two. My problem is that I cannot seem to get any combination of biblatex commands to produce a citation with the author name inline and year in the footnote. (I'm using authoryear-icomp as the biblatex style.)

Example of what I'd like:

In my article I reference the recent work of Authorname^1, which is important.

^1: <this is a footnote containing only> Year.

In natbib terms, I'd like a \citet{} command that puts the name in the text but puts the year in the footnote. I have no problem using \footcite to get Author and year into a footnote, but can't seem to figure out how to keep an author's name in the text so certain sentences can keep their flow.

I could obviously work around this by writing out the author's name, footnoting the year, and using \nocite to put it in the bibliography. This, however, would defeat the whole purpose of being to easily switch between journal requirements.

I figure there's an easy solution and I'm just being a tool. Help?

Answer 1

Second solution

Edited again, so most multicite commands work.

Edited so \footcite now works.

A reasonably effective solution that preserves many of biblatex's featuers is provided by adjusting the way the year gets printed in citations. This can be done by redifining the commands associated to cite:year and cite:extrayear. This has the advantage of preserving the ibidem feature.

The code below includes a sample bibliography and then the main file with the redefined citation code.

\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}
@Article{Test,
author = {Author, A. N.},
title = {Article title},
year = 2005,
pages = {10-20},
journal = {Jour.},
vol = {100}
}
@Article{Test2,
author = {Author, A. N.},
title = {Second article},
year = 2005,
pages = {10-20},
journal = {Jour.},
vol = {100}
}
@Article{Test3,
author = {Author, A. B.},
title = {Third article},
year = 2005,
pages = {10-20},
journal = {Jour.},
vol = {100}
}
@Article{Test4,
author = {Author, A. N.},
title = {Fourth article},
year = 2007,
pages = {10-20},
journal = {Jour.},
vol = {100}
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=authoryear-icomp,autocite=plain]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{test.bib}

\renewbibmacro*{cite:labelyear+extrayear}{%
  \iffieldundef{labelyear}
    {}
    {\iftoggle{blx@footnote}
      {\printtext[bibhyperref]{%
       \printfield{labelyear}%
       \printfield{extrayear}}}
      {\footnote{\printtext[bibhyperref]{%
       \printfield{labelyear}%
       \printfield{extrayear}}}}}}

\renewbibmacro*{cite:extrayear}{%
  \iffieldundef{extrayear}
    {}
    {\iftoggle{blx@footnote}
      {\printtext[bibhyperref]{\printfield{extrayear}}}%
      {\footnote{\printtext[bibhyperref]{%
      \printfield{labelyear}%
      \printfield{extrayear}}}}}}

\renewcommand{\compcitedelim}{\space}

\begin{document}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\autocite{Test} and
\autocite[page 3]{Test}.
Some text \parencite{Test2}.

Here is a footnote citation\footcite{Test}.

\autocite{Test,Test4,Test3}.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

As the above shows this works with \autocite, \parencite and accepts their optional arguments. In this style \autocite is the same as \cite.

I haven't demonstrated \textcite, though its ouptut may be useful sometimes; \footcite has also been set up to work, thanks to biblatex's blx@footnote toggle that detects whether we are in a footnote or not.

The code also takes care of most multiple citations \cite{ref1,ref2}. However, there is a spurious comma, if ref1 and ref2 are two publications from the same author in the same year. Fixing that requires, more substanitial rewriting of the citation style file: each of the commands \cite, \textcite, etc. in author-icomp.cbx contains an explicit comma via \setunit{\addcomma}, that needs to be deleted.

Original solution

Here is a repost of the original solution, as this apparently helps the OP best. It simply defines a newcommand \citepfy (plain-foot-year) that calls \citeauthor followed by a modified \footcite command that produces only the year. It does not accept any of the optional arguments cite commands in biblatex usually do.

\begin{filecontents}{b.bib}
@Article{Test,
author = {Author, A. N.},
title = {Article title},
year = 2005,
pages = {10-20},
journal = {Jour.},
vol = {100}
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=authoryear-icomp]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{b.bib}

\newcommand{\citepfy}[1]{\citeauthor{#1}\footyearcite{#1}}
\DeclareCiteCommand{\footyearcite}[\mkbibfootnote]
  {\usebibmacro{cite:init}%
   \usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{citeyear}}
  {}
  {\usebibmacro{cite:postnote}}

\begin{document}
\citepfy{Test}
\printbibliography
\end{document}