How to mutate bibliography access-date of specific references?

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Hello @MartyByrde, it might be possible to use a combination of regexp to detect online entries in your bibliography and replace the access dates accordingly, however I do not recommend it for the following reasons:

  • the ground truth is your bibfile (or whichever software you use to manage your references), not your Typst document. If you want to update the urlDate property, then you should update your ground truth.
  • Websites are not immutable, hence you cannot guarantee that the website is identical to your previous reference if you change the access date. I recommend simply adding a new reference with a more recent access date. Best case scenario, you can cite from a digital archive like archive.org. From the Chicago Manual of Style, you can read about online references (if you need a specific version)

    If you do not cite an archived version, you will need to include an access date.

  • If you use Zotero with Better BibTeX, you can generate a unique citation key for onlines entries using the following formula
    (type(webpage)
+ auth.lower + '_' + (month ? month + '_': '') + year + '_accessed_' + 
AccessDate.formatDate
) | (auth.lower + shorttitle(3,3) + year)
)
    You will obtain something similar to carpenter_jul_2024_accessed_2024-07-11.

I understand it does not answer the original question, but I think this is a classic case of a XY problem!

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