Private USENET server to SMF Conversion

[Neil Robinson]

Hi, I have a private news server that we really need to update to something more modern. Unfortunately, we also want to keep the thousands of posts that are on the current forum, as well as find a way to integrate existing members and their passwords. I can write a utility to retrieve all the messages from all the groups into my own database, the questions is, where do I find out which information I need to add the posts (with their original date/times) to the database? Some of these contain base64 encoded attachments as well. I can strip those, but would need to have some sort of strategy in place for them. The forum is for a programming language, so uploads are important.

Any help or suggestions are really welcome.

Thank you.

[margarett]

As usual, imports from foreign software is always a very tricky operation.

If you can get that data in a MySQL database form, you're half way there
The other half is to get it in a SMF-compatible format.

I would suggest you to check the converter I've made for XF. Although your origin will be totally different from this, the structure and necessary fields for SMF are totally explicit there
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=512266.0

[Neil Robinson]

Thanks, I will have a look. I have no concerns about massaging the data to fit the target, I do that sort of thing all the time. I already have all the messages extracted into a database, it merely remains to commit them to a freshly built SMF system. I will let you know how I get on.

[emanuele]

where do I find out which information I need to add the posts (with their original date/times) to the database?

You mean what informations does SMF need?
I think the best place if the database itself.
Going by memory, I think that a username, an email and an hashed password should be enough for a user.

Unfortunately, we also want to keep the thousands of posts that are on the current forum, as well as find a way to integrate existing members and their passwords.

If you know the hashing algorithm you may save the passwords too, add that algorithm to the list of "alternatives" present in SMF and when the user does its first login SMF will ask him to provide again the password and will save into the "proper" format.

Some of these contain base64 encoded attachments as well. I can strip those, but would need to have some sort of strategy in place for them. The forum is for a programming language, so uploads are important.

I think you have two options here:
1) convert those attachments while doing the upgrade, convert them to files and place them in the appropriated place,
2) keep them in base64 (save them either into the database (if the attachments are not so big, let's say no more than 65k chars) or as text files in the attachments directory) and convert them "on-the-fly" every time one is required.
I think 1 is better.

* emanuele would have also another solution, but it would involve what is considered a competitor, so it's probably not fair to mention (even more because I'm not sure it would work)