Adding an [AuthorYear] block at the beginning of bibliography entries

Question

I want to add a block at the beginning of my bib entries of the form

[Lastnameauthor(s) Year]

When the shortauthor field is defined it should use this field +Year instead. The following example is fairly minimal:

\begin{filecontents*}{test.bbx}
\ProvidesFile{test.bbx} 
[\abx@bbxid $Id: test.bbx,v 0.9d 2010/09/03 20:11:58 lehman beta $] 
\RequireBibliographyStyle{authoryear}

\DeclareBibliographyDriver{article}{%
  \usebibmacro{bibindex}%
  \usebibmacro{begentry}%
  %---add something here---
  \usebibmacro{author/translator+others}%
  \setunit{\labelnamepunct}\newblock
  \usebibmacro{title}%
  \newunit
  \printlist{language}%
  \newunit\newblock
  \usebibmacro{byauthor}%
  \newunit\newblock
  \usebibmacro{bytranslator+others}%
  \newunit\newblock
  \printfield{version}%
  \newunit\newblock
  \usebibmacro{in:}%
  \usebibmacro{journal+issuetitle}%
  \newunit
  \usebibmacro{byeditor+others}%
  \newunit
  \usebibmacro{note+pages}%
  \newunit\newblock
  \iftoggle{bbx:isbn}
    {\printfield{issn}}
    {}%
  \newunit\newblock
  \usebibmacro{doi+eprint+url}%
  \newunit\newblock
  \usebibmacro{addendum+pubstate}%
  \setunit{\bibpagerefpunct}\newblock
  \usebibmacro{pageref}%
  \usebibmacro{finentry}}

\endinput
 \end{filecontents*}
\begin{filecontents*}{MeineBib.bib}
  @article{example,
 author={Firstname Lastname and First Last},
  title={Title},
 journal={Journal},
 year={Year},
  pages={Pages},
} 
  \end{filecontents*}

\documentclass[12pt,ngerman,    ]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\usepackage[babel,german=quotes]{csquotes}
\usepackage [bibstyle=test]{biblatex}
\bibliography{MeineBib} 
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\cite{example}
\printbibliography\end{document}

I'm guessing the solution lies here

DeclareBibliographyDriver{article}{%
      \usebibmacro{bibindex}%
      \usebibmacro{begentry}%
      %---add something here---
      \usebibmacro{author/translator+others}%

but I can't find out how. It should look like this which is an existing style (natdin) in BibTeX, but not in biblatex.

Answer 1

Way back, I answered a very similar question at the German-speaking forum mrunix.de. The trick is to add \usebibmacro{cite} to the bibmacro begentry (which does nothing by default). Then choose the citestyle authoryear and the bibliography style authortitle, sort the bibliography by author-year-title, remove dashes for recurrent authors ... and you're set. ;-)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[citestyle=authoryear-comp,bibstyle=authortitle,sorting=nyt,dashed=false,%
    maxcitenames=1]{biblatex}

\newcounter{mymaxcitenames}
\AtBeginDocument{%
  \setcounter{mymaxcitenames}{\value{maxnames}}%
}

\renewbibmacro*{begentry}{%
  \printtext[brackets]{%
    \begingroup
    \defcounter{maxnames}{\value{mymaxcitenames}}%
    \printnames{labelname}%
    \setunit{\nameyeardelim}%
    \usebibmacro{cite:labelyear+extrayear}%
    \endgroup
    }%
  \quad% or \addspace
}

\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{first-last}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{biblatextest.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A. and Buthor, B.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{biblatextest.bib}

\begin{document}

Some text \autocite{A01}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}

EDIT: Improved redefinition of begentry to allow for cases where maxnames differs between in-text-citations and the bibliography. (\defcounter is an etoolbox macro that allows [in contrast to \setcounter] for local redefinitions of counter values.)

EDIT 2: Removed need to manually set custom counter.

EDIT 3: Changed format of author names to first-last.

EDIT 4: Replaced \usebibmacro{cite} with lower-level commands in order to make example also work with comp styles (which compress recurring author names in citations).

(In case anyone is wondering about these piecemeal enhancements: This question has become sort of a "Parallel Campaign" to another question at mrunix.de.)