phpbb to Vanilla conversion tool

Questions

bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

Has anyone made a working phpbb to vanilla conversion tool yet? im running 3.0.7 pl1 and want to attempt to move over all my members.
[-Stash-] March 2010
Posts: 2,610

Vanilla 1 or 2?

Using the search community function...

For Vanilla 1 you probably want to follow this post and see how it goes for you.

For Vanilla 2 you would probably want to speak to Lincoln about how to modify his vBulletin importer for phpBB.
bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

Vanilla 2

Im not concerned with anything fancy, what ever is easiest as far as the conversion process. I just want to move the users overs and posts. im not worried about bbcodes smilies or anything.

@Lincoln
How did your vbulletin importer come around, and would you be interested in helping mod that to import phpbb

i also remember seeing talk about a universal import tool, not sure if this is possible or if anything ever came about
Lincoln March 2010
Posts: 2,016

@bobtheman phpBB will be a priority for the universal importer. I recommend patience for now. :)

Vanilla developer [GitHub, Twitter]
bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

takes patience pill and crys for now

@Lincoln
has any production started on the universal importer yet?
Lincoln March 2010
Posts: 2,016

@bobtheman It's all I worked on over the weekend. :)

Vanilla developer [GitHub, Twitter]
Mark March 2010
Posts: 4,880

:D !!!
bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

@Lincoln
my programing skills arnt the greatest yet, but i will be more than willing to test it out on phpbb and contribute any help i can. Is or are you going to post it up on github ?
Lincoln March 2010
Posts: 2,016

@bobtheman Yup, it's on GitHub, but it's not complete enough for any testing. I'll let you know when there's something worth trying.

Vanilla developer [GitHub, Twitter]
AnotherDan March 2010
Posts: 15

I'm migrating a phpbb3 board to vanilla2 - it's been done almost entirely through sql... And a password converter inspired by @Lincoln's work.

As far as I remember the only thing i needed to "hardcode" in the sql script was the user groups i wanted to migrate...
bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

excellent @AnotherDan

maybe we can collaborate and work together on the phpbb portion of the converter
AnotherDan March 2010
Posts: 15

@bobtheman: I have no problem contributing to a phpbb3 based converter... :)
bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

@AnotherDan Thanks

@Lincoln
can you link to the github
Lincoln March 2010
Posts: 2,016

http://github.com/lincolnwebs/VanillaPorter

To add to it you'd make a class.phpbb.php file in the style of the (barely started) class.vbulletin.php. There are still some gray areas about how I'm going to get some non-standard info into the export.

Vanilla developer [GitHub, Twitter]
bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

@Lincoln & @Mark

importing and exporting user data in core is a feature that garden/vanilla lacks currently. This would be a great opportunity to develop this. This way after i use the conversion tool, i can export my user data and forum discussions so i can preform a quick and easy fresh install and import everything back if need be.

maybe after a successful conversion, it should ask to export all data. this would be convenient.
bobtheman March 2010
Posts: 430

@AnotherDan
Did you have any success with your conversion? can you post your conversion tool/scripts so i can merge what i have so far. if you can throw them up on github or pastebin that would be great.

Im in desperate need of a internal v2 export utility. Between using the v2 beta, updating to newest github files, and attempting to convert in users from a phpbb database its extremely important to export what i have "users and vanilla posts" so if anything goes wrong i can do a fresh install and import the backup.
[-Stash-] March 2010
Posts: 2,610

@bobtheman, if you have phpmyadmin access, can't you just take an SQL dump of the users and comments tables? I've not looked at the V2 database structure at all, so I'm not even sure this is possible, but I would have thought it would be something simple like this?
Lincoln April 2010
Posts: 2,016

@bobtheman Preserving user data is important to me and will not be overlooked, one way or another.

Vanilla developer [GitHub, Twitter]
AnotherDan April 2010
Posts: 15

@bobtheman - yes i've had great success with the converssion - it's not a thorough import of everything in phpbb i've made... I've focused on getting the simple user data, categories, discussions and comments - and that worked fine...

Still have some issues regarding permissions in the categories to figure out a better way to do...

The conversion I'm doing needs alot of changes in the structure of the categories (to use the vanilla terminology) - but I will put my work in progress up for everyone to use...
bobtheman April 2010
Posts: 430

please do and link to it if you can... Im excited
buzz_lightyear July 2010
Posts: 12

Hi all,
is there any progress with phpbb3 import, please?
thanx
Todd July 2010
Posts: 1,436

I made a phpbb3 exporter, but haven't fully tested it yet. I think at this point @bontheman has actually gotten it to work and maybe he can shed some light.

Can I give you an estimate of next week?

Vanilla co-founder
buzz_lightyear July 2010
Posts: 12

Hi Todd,
i've just tested it :) It works GREAT!
(ok, there was a very small error in class.phpbb.php) BUT:
I've imported about 105.000 users and 5700 discussions and almost 30.000 comments...

Just perfect!

There are couple of little things, which i'd need to take a closer look at...

Here's my import result (my test domain) http://pdapimps.com

thanx!
Todd July 2010
Posts: 1,436

@buzz_lightyear, can you tell me what the error in class.phpbb.php is?

Vanilla co-founder
buzz_lightyear July 2010
Posts: 12

hi Todd,
the line 19 was giving me error.
'topics' => array('topic_id'=>'DiscussionID', 'forum_id', ...
so once i changed it to:
'topics' => array('topic_id', 'forum_id', ...
it was OK.

Offtopic:
[code]test[/test]

One other thing, that i don't understand is, that in my imported posts, all BBcode is formatted as it (almost) should be. Also if there are URLs with images, it renders images. Also code is formatted as code. However when i write a post directly, it doesn't work. See above [code] BBcode. Am i doing something wrong?
candyman July 2010
Posts: 232

Maybe you have to write [/code] instead of [/test].

Edit: No, it's the same.
pmarchand July 2010
Posts: 24

I'm glad to see that the convertion tool is working pretty well :)
Todd July 2010
Posts: 1,436
@buzz_lightyear, you need to edit your config to make new posts default to BBCode (which I guess the importer should do at some point). For now, just edit your config.php and add the following line:
```
$Configuration['Garden']['InputFormatter'] = 'BBCode';
```
Vanilla co-founder
buzz_lightyear July 2010
Posts: 12

@candyman
LOL sorry, my typo.. but u've tested too with [/code] ;)

@Todd
Thanx, that enables BBcode

edit: deleted some stuff... This "sorting by votes" is pretty confusing :)
yusf July 2010
Posts: 23

Uhm, sorry if I've overlooked something, but how did you phpBB-exporters go about it? Using the porter from github I'm only faced by the Vanilla 1.x and vBulletin 3+ options, not phpBB…
buzz_lightyear July 2010
Posts: 12

Hi @yusf,
as far as i understood it, the phpBB exporter is still in kind of beta phase... I mean not released yet. So in order to use phpBB exporter in VanillaPorter, you need to do some small change in the code and run make.php to put all the classes together.

But i think, that @Todd mentioned "estimate one week" in a post above http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/125696/#Comment_125696
(i suppose, one week to release it, as it works without problems)