Biblatex-APA Undefined References – How to Fix

apa-stylebiblatex

I cannot, for the life of me, get biblatex's apa style to work. Other biblatex styles work fine, apa, however, does neither print a reference list, nor produce a citation at all (single output is key in boldprint). Warning "undefined references" is produced.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[german, ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[babel]{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{german}{german-apa}

\begin{filecontents}{apa-test-bib.bib}

@book{Labov1972,
    Address = {Philadelphia},
    Author = {William Labov},
    Publisher = {University of Pennsylvania Press},
    Title = {Sociolinguistic Patterns},
    Year = {1972}}

\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{apa-test-bib.bib}

\begin{document}

Bla \cite{Labov1972}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

I run the newest version available of all packages.
Can someone help, please? Am I just overlooking the obvious?

Best Answer

This is a bug in biblatex 1.7 and the \RequireBiber[3] setting it appears. This was changed in biblatex-apa style 4.5. You can change the apa.bbx file to \RequireBiber[2] to fix it. I have released version 4.6 of the style with this setting and it should be in TL today.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Using biblatex-apa

On Miktex your example with apa doesn't work due to two reasons:

There is the language mapping commands missing which loads an xxx-apa.lbx which contains some apa specific settings.
You are using canadian as language and the necessary canadian-apa.lbx doesn't exist here.

To solve 1. I used the following example (test.bib is the name of my bib-files for tests):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[canadian]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{canadian}{canadian-apa}
\addbibresource{test.bib}
\begin{document}
This statement is true \parencite[5-8]{Ref}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}

To solve 2. I used one existing xxx-apa.lbx (e.g. british-apa.lbx or american-apa.lbx I have no idea which is better suited as starting point) and made a copy called canadian-apa.lbx. Then I changed in the file in two places the language to "canadian":

In the first line: \ProvidesFile{canadian-apa.lbx}
In \DefineBibliographyExtras{canadian}...

and stored the file in a place where latex can find it.

An alternative way is to use e.g. the language american for the bibliography:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[canadian]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,backend=biber,language=american]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\addbibresource{test.bib}
\begin{document}
This statement is true \parencite[5-8]{Ref}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] biblatex messing up citation entry with lots of authors

This problem is due to biblatex-apa's (apa.bbx's) apaauthor name format; you might want to notify the author of this small bug.

The string and others in the author list sets ifmorenames to true. apaauthor checks for this case whenever a name is printed, not just at the very end of the list; consequently it prints the andothers string ("et al.") after each name.

The fix is to add the following lines to your preamble.

\DeclareNameFormat{apaauthor}{%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
    {\addcomma\addspace\ldots\addspace}
    {\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
      {}
      {\ifthenelse{\iffieldequalstr{doubtfulauthor}{true}}
        {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}?}}
        {\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}}}}%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\value{listtotal}}% this test is new
    {\ifmorenames{\andothersdelim\bibstring{andothers}}{}}{}}

The MWE

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@Article{boker2011,
Author = {Boker, S. and Neale, M. and Maes, H. and Wilde, M. and
Spiegel, M. and Brick, T. and Spies, J. and Estabrook,
R. and Kenny, S. and Bates, T. and others},
Title = {Open{M}x: {A}n open source extended structural
equation modeling framework},
Journal = {Psychometrika},
Volume = {76},
Number = {2},
Pages = {306--317},
year = 2011
}


\documentclass{apa6}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,maxnames=999,sortcites=true,sorting=nyt,apabackref=true,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareNameFormat{apaauthor}{%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
    {\addcomma\addspace\ldots\addspace}
    {\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
      {}
      {\ifthenelse{\iffieldequalstr{doubtfulauthor}{true}}
        {\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}?}}
        {\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}}}}%
  \ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\value{listtotal}}
    {\ifmorenames{\andothersdelim\bibstring{andothers}}{}}{}}

\shorttitle{IFA}

\begin{document}

OpenMx \parencite{boker2011,aksin,wilde,murray}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

then yields

enter image description here

Update 2013-10: This has been corrected in biblatex-apa version 6.4 according to a comment below the question from user PLK.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Using biblatex-apa

[Tex/LaTex] biblatex messing up citation entry with lots of authors

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