Subfiles and Referencing

Question

I am having some trouble getting a modular document to work.

This is what my files look like at the moment

./rootdoc.tex

./tex/childdoc.tex

./bib/bibliography.bib

the files look like...

./rootdoc

\documentclass{book}    
%some packages    
\usepackage{subfiles}    
\usepackage[colorlinks=true]{hyperref}    
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=numeric]{biblatex}    
    \addbibresource{bib/bibliography.bib}

\begin{document}    
    \subfile{tex/childdoc.tex}    
    \printbibliography[heading=bibintoc]    
\end{document}

./tex/childdoc

\documentclass[../rootdoc.tex]{subfiles}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Sample Chapter}
some text that i have to cite\cite{ross}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

When compiling the root document everything works fine and I get the following

But when I compile .\tex.childdoc I get

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

This is not my solution, but I thought I would combine two other solutions that I found on the site.

Bibliographies when using subfiles and subfiles inside a subfile using relative paths

As Before

./rootdoc.tex
./tex/childdoc.tex
./bib/bibliography.bib

in the ./rootdoc.tex file

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage{subfiles}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true]{hyperref}

\providecommand{\main}{.}
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=numeric]{biblatex}
    \addbibresource{\main/bib/bibliography.bib}
\makeatletter
    \newrobustcmd*{\nobibliography}{%
      \@ifnextchar[%]
        {\blx@nobibliography}
        {\blx@nobibliography[]}}
    \def\blx@nobibliography[#1]{}
    \appto{\skip@preamble}{\let\printbibliography\nobibliography}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
    \subfile{./tex/childdoc.tex} 
    \printbibliography[heading=bibintoc]
\end{document}

and in the ./tex/childdoc.tex file

\providecommand{\main}{..}
\documentclass[../rootdoc.tex]{subfiles}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Sample Chapter}
some text that i have to cite\cite{ross}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

now the correct .bibfile is referenced and when child is compiled the bibliography does not appear twice when the root document is compiled.

Answer 2

I have spend some hours with this problem too. I basically just want to be able to compile single subfiles in order to have the possibility of sending single chapters to my thesis supervisor during my writing process.

The different solutions from the two links provided by Quantifeye are definitely more flexible, but my solution below is very simple and works for my workflow:

Simply just use the absolute path to your .bib-file when calling \addbibresource{...} in the preamble, i.e. do something like

\documentclass{book}    
%some packages    
\usepackage{subfiles}    
\usepackage[colorlinks=true]{hyperref}    
\usepackage[backend=biber,style=numeric]{biblatex}    
%Use absolute paths to .bib-files for the subfiles to understand their location:
    \addbibresource{/home/Username/Dropbox/Thesis/TeX_code/thesisReferences.bib}

\begin{document}    
    \subfile{tex/childdoc.tex}    
    \printbibliography[heading=bibintoc]    
\end{document}

and in the subfiles

\documentclass[../rootdoc.tex]{subfiles}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Sample Chapter}
some text that i have to cite\cite{ross}
%\printbibliography %Comment or un-comment depending on desired output
\end{document}

If I want my supervisor to see the references I will of course add the \printbibliography to the subfile, but my main concern has just been to compile anything else without my citations looking weird or having my editor throw me an error message.

NOTE: This solution is obviously not optimal if you work on a shared document, or if you want to work on more machines with different file systems.

It is however a very simple solution and it works well for me and my requirements to my workflow.