Collection re-export on 11.0-beta.1+b551fb670

[Emiliano]

When I import this RDF, and then export the collection "auto-export", the export contains the collection itself as if it were a subcollection. Does not happen on release, and it's probably only recently started doing this in my tests; a week ago they ran green.

[Dan Stillman]

On 10/16/26 9:36 AM, 'Emiliano' via zotero-dev wrote:

When I import this RDF, and then export the collection "auto-export", the export contains the collection itself as if it were a subcollection. Does not happen on release, and it's probably only recently started doing this in my tests; a week ago they ran green.

This is by design. Exporting a collection in Zotero 11 now includes the collection itself, which allows us to differentiate between items in the top-level collection and items in subcollections, as well as to preserve the top-level collection name without relying on the filename. When you import that collection into Zotero 11, you should still end up with a single top-level collection with the same name (and if you were exporting a whole collection tree, you'd find that items that only existed in subcollections wouldn't be placed in the top-level collection as they were before).

[Emiliano]

How is a collection recognizable as being the root collection? 

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[Emiliano]

Because my tests are currently failing, as I am exporting this folder as a subfolder.

[Dan Stillman]

The collections returned by Zotero.nextCollection() are the roots. Subcollections are nested in 'descendents'. In Zotero 11, when exporting a collection, the root is the exported collection itself rather than its subcollections.

[Emiliano]

In the case of a library with a single collection, with a single item in the library that is present in that collection, how would I tell the difference between the whole library being exported, or just the collection? 

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[Dan Stillman]

You can't, but the two exports contain the exact same data, so it's correct for the output to be the same.

[Emiliano]

But the fact that they contain the same data is the problem. The user exported something different. I would not expect the data to be the same. 

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[Dan Stillman]

No, there's no difference.

You have an empty library. You add a collection and an item to it. It shouldn't matter if you export the library or the collection. Either way, when you import into an empty library, you get exactly what you started with. That wasn't the case before, but it is now.

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[Emiliano]

But I don't have an empty library in this scenario. I have a library with one item. I export the full library, or just the collection, and I get the same output either way. 

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[Emiliano]

Is this related to the beta allowing multiselect on collections? 

[Dan Stillman]

I think you're misunderstanding. I'm saying you start with an empty library, and then you add a collection and an item within it. It shouldn't matter whether you export the library or export the collection. It's the exact same thing, because all items in the collection also exist in the library root. Either way, if you import into an empty library, you end up with exactly what you started with — a collection with an item within it. If you're expecting to end up with something different, you should say what that is.

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[Emiliano]

I don't think it's going to change anything, but it's a surprise to me that if I export the collection, I get something that claims to contain a collection. 

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[Dan Stillman]

You exported the collection, so the export contains that collection. It's analogous to zipping a folder — you get the folder, not just its contents. Leaving it out lost its name and which items were directly in it, as opposed to only in subcollections. That's what this change fixes.

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