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| -rw-r--r-- | doc/tips/convert_mediawiki_to_ikiwiki.mdwn | 101 |
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diff --git a/doc/tips/convert_mediawiki_to_ikiwiki.mdwn b/doc/tips/convert_mediawiki_to_ikiwiki.mdwn index f03703b46..c522eaec3 100644 --- a/doc/tips/convert_mediawiki_to_ikiwiki.mdwn +++ b/doc/tips/convert_mediawiki_to_ikiwiki.mdwn @@ -1,4 +1,97 @@ -[[sabr]] explains how to [import MediaWiki content into -git](http://u32.net/Mediawiki_Conversion/index.html?updated), including -full edit hostory. The [[plugins/contrib/mediawiki]] plugin can then be -used by ikiwiki to build the wiki. +Mediawiki is a dynamically-generated wiki which stores it's data in a +relational database. Pages are marked up using a proprietary markup. It is +possible to import the contents of a Mediawiki site into an ikiwiki, +converting some of the Mediawiki conventions into Ikiwiki ones. + +The following instructions describe ways of obtaining the current version of +the wiki. We do not yet cover importing the history of edits. + +## Step 1: Getting a list of pages + +The first bit of information you require is a list of pages in the Mediawiki. +There are several different ways of obtaining these. + +### Parsing the output of `Special:Allpages` + +Mediawikis have a special page called `Special:Allpages` which list all the +pages for a given namespace on the wiki. + +If you fetch the output of this page to a local file with something like + + wget -q -O tmpfile 'http://your-mediawiki/wiki/Special:Allpages' + +You can extract the list of page names using the following python script. Note +that this script is sensitive to the specific markup used on the page, so if +you have tweaked your mediawiki theme a lot from the original, you will need +to adjust this script too: + + from xml.dom.minidom import parse, parseString + + dom = parse(argv[1]) + tables = dom.getElementsByTagName("table") + pagetable = tables[-1] + anchors = pagetable.getElementsByTagName("a") + for a in anchors: + print a.firstChild.toxml().\ + replace('&,'&').\ + replace('<','<').\ + replace('>','>') + +Also, if you have pages with titles that need to be encoded to be represented +in HTML, you may need to add further processing to the last line. + +### Querying the database + +If you have access to the relational database in which your mediawiki data is +stored, it is possible to derive a list of page names from this. + +## Step 2: fetching the page data + +Once you have a list of page names, you can fetch the data for each page. + +### Method 1: via HTTP and `action=raw` + +You need to create two derived strings from the page titles already: the +destination path for the page and the source URL. Assuming `$pagename` +contains a pagename obtained above, and `$wiki` contains the URL to your +mediawiki's `index.php` file: + + src=`echo "$pagename" | tr ' ' _ | sed 's,&,&,g'` + dest=`"$pagename" | tr ' ' _ | sed 's,&,__38__,g'` + + mkdir -p `dirname "$dest"` + wget -q "$wiki?title=$src&action=raw" -O "$dest" + +### Method 2: via HTTP and `Special:Export` + +Mediawiki also has a special page `Special:Export` which can be used to obtain +the source of the page and other metadata such as the last contributor, or the +full history, etc. + +You need to send a `POST` request to the `Special:Export` page. See the source +of the page fetched via `GET` to determine the correct arguments. + +You will then need to write an XML parser to extract the data you need from +the result. + +### Method 3: via the database + +It is possible to extract the page data from the database with some +well-crafted queries. + +## Step 2: format conversion + +The next step is to convert Mediawiki conventions into Ikiwiki ones. These +include + + * convert Categories into tags + * ... + +## External links + +[[sabr]] used to explain how to [import MediaWiki content into +git](http://u32.net/Mediawiki_Conversion/index.html?updated), including full +edit history, but as of 2009/10/16 that site is not available. + +The [[plugins/contrib/mediawiki]] plugin can then be used by ikiwiki to build +the wiki. |