Author and date not always appearing in custom CSL script

CSL Usage
1

Dear all,

I am developing a custom .CSL style for a student-run popular science magazine at my university. I am getting caught up on the last thing I want to accomplish and am looking for advice. I would like to create a class specifically for YouTube videos cited as such:

[1] Youtube Video, Director, Year, URL

Within the bibliography tags, I call on author then begin a block where I specify information for specific document types:

<bibliography entry-spacing="0" second-field-align="flush">
    <layout>
      <text variable="citation-number" prefix="[" suffix="]"/>
      <text macro="author" suffix=", "/>
      <choose>
        <if type="bill book graphic legal_case legislation report song" match="any">
          <group delimiter=", ">
            <text variable="title" text-case="title"/>
            <text macro="year-date"/>
            <text macro="edition"/>
            <text macro="publisher"/>
          </group>
        </if>
        <else-if type="motion_picture" match="any">
          <group delimiter=", ">
            <text value="Youtube Video"/>
            <text macro="year-date"/>
            <text variable="URL"/>
          </group>
        </else-if>
...

The author and year appear for books, but not for documents of type video recording and film in the word document I generate a bibliography in. The issue is that the author and date fields aren’t appearing at all, and not a question of putting them where I desire. In other citation styles (e.g. APA7), the author and date appear correctly for the same Zotero entry.

I would appreciate any insight into my issue and I apologize for any oversight of simple issues as this is my first time working with the citation style language.

Thank you

2

There is no actual author field in Zotero for videos – it’s director and gets mapped to director in CSL. If you want something to behave as an author variable, use

author: Smith||Adam

in the Extra field in Zotero.