Scripts for converting database?

[mconsidine]

Hi,
This is a great program and I look forward to working with it.  Having searched the archives, I noticed an older thread that referenced there being scripts available to convert a database to a format that can be used by other software (e.g. phpBB).

Can someone point me to where those are available or could I get a copy of the scripts sent to me?

My reason for asking (which I'll also get into in a second post) is that I would like to be able to access the message/files/photos under Linux.

Thanks in advance,
Matt Considine

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Matt,

That advice is obsolete now.

To port to (for example) phpBB you will need to setup Xampp

https://www.apachefriends.org/download_success.html

which is a program that runs on your PC or Linux box.


Then install phpBB 3.0.14

https://www.phpbb.com/files/release/phpBB-3.0.14.zip

on Xampp.

Then you need to install two modifications to phpBB:

1) User import mod  https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=1494875

2) Generic Message Import mod https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=2115251


Then you will need to convert the Yahoo group messages to XML format (see Generic Message Import mod)
to load them into phpBB. First remove extraneous HTML tags and non-ascii characters before splitting the XML.
Of all the tasks, this is the most time consuming.


Once loaded into phpBB on Xampp you will need to create a phpBB site online. You do not need the mods on this site.

Then dump the database from phpBB (Xampp) to the online version.


Its not an easy process but it can be done.


Cheers,

Wilson. 

[mconsidine]

Hi Wilson,

Thank you for the detailed reply.  In your experience has the stripping of extraneous tags been an entirely manual process or have you been able to use some regex kung-fu to search-and-replace?  Are the messages imported as separate files or one large file?

Thanks in advance for any reply.  And thanks for your work on this!
Matt

[Wilson Logan]

Hi Matt,

You can use Regex but they must be applied strictly in a specific order.

Once you get the messages imported into phpBB what needs to be done becomes apparent very soon!

You can import the messages as a monolithic file but obviously the larger the file, the longer it takes and if you have missed some invisible non-ascii character that causes the import to explode then you will be sorry you tried to import all the messages at once.

phpBB is very picky about what it will accept compared to YG! which allowed absolutely everything.

Cheers,

Wilson.