Converting To Simple Machines From PhpBB 3.3.1

[Catsmother]

Hello there.

I have someone helping me and I am wanting to convert to SM but we're getting loads of errors. Is there a way this can be done please?

[Doug Heffernan]

Hello there.

I have someone helping me and I am wanting to convert to SM but we're getting loads of errors. Is there a way this can be done please?

What errors are you getting?

[Catsmother]

Hello there.

I have someone helping me and I am wanting to convert to SM but we're getting loads of errors. Is there a way this can be done please?

What errors are you getting?

I have just asked the person who is trying to install it to come and reply here.

[boro_boy]

Hello,

I was getting errors on mybb. With simple machines I couldn't find anything to use, to transfer from phpBB to simple machines. Is there a migration / import script that will work? Like I say, I had a look but couldn't find anything.

[boro_boy]

Just tried a converter for phpbb 3.2 but got this error:

Converting ranks... Unsuccessful!
This query:
DELETE FROM `forumfor_smf843`.smfif_membergroups
WHERE groupName LIKE 'phpBB %';
Caused the error:
1054

So not sure where to go with this!

[vbgamer45]

What SMF version? That looks like SMF 1.1.x above

Did you grab the convertor from the site here? We don't yet have one for 3.3.  3.2 has conversion issues with posts.

[boro_boy]

Hello and thank you for your reply, I got the converter from here:

https://download.simplemachines.org/index.php?converters;id=69

I may just have to wait until a converter is available.

[Doug Heffernan]

I think another way to go about this is to convert first to MyBB and then from that you can convert to Smf. Smf has a converter that supports the latest version of MyBB to Smf 2.0.17. I think that it is worth a try.

[Antechinus]

We don't yet have one for 3.3.  3.2 has conversion issues with posts.

That means you don't have one for 3.2 either. And 3.2 is years old.

[vbgamer45]

Correct hopefully someone can help fix that issue one day. Maybe you can give it a shot.

[Antechinus]

I don't know anything about converters.

If the phpBB 3.2/3.3 to MyBB ** converter works, and the MyBB ** to SMF 2.0.x converter works, then frankly doing it that way would probably be easier than fixing the phpBB 3.2 to SMF 2.0.x converter. Probably worth a quick test run.

**Don't know offhand what the latest version of MyBB is, not ever having been interested in using it.

[Antechinus]

Just looking at a db dump from phpBB 3.2.9. The tags that are causing the problems with post conversion seem pretty straightforward to get rid of. If the conversion script doesn't require the phpBB forum to be actually running (ie: just needs the database) it would be possible to kill the unwanted tags in a code editor just with find/replace. There aren't that many of them (AFAICT at the moment):

Code Select Expand

<E> </E>
<r> </r>
<s> </s>
<t> </t>

Quote appear to be done with uppercase for parent quotes and lowercase for nested quotes:

Code Select Expand

<QUOTE author=\"whoopee\"><s>[quote=\"yeeha\"]

There are also some line break codes that are not standard HTML, but are perfectly obvious.

Code Select Expand

\n

Beats me why they need two different syntaxes to do line breaks, but whatever.

Then there are some odd emoji tags, but in theory you could do a code replace on those too:

Code Select Expand

<EMOJI seq=\"1f609\">:wink:</EMOJI>

Url formatting inside posts (ie: bbc_link class in SMF) is really bizarre:

Code Select Expand

<URL url=\"http://www.example.com/about.htm\"><s>[url=http://www.example.com/about.htm]</s>this page<e>[/url]</e></URL>

Not sure if there are any other odd ones (cbf'd doing too much digging at this time of night) but again it's probably possible to sort a generic find/replace for these. And I would expect that if it can be done with a basic code editor, it could also be done with SQL queries.

[vbgamer45]

Yeah some are very odd. MyBB doesn't look it handles it either their convertor is old as well but haven't tried using it. I just refer to other convertors when updating ours

[Antechinus]

Yeah I took a quick squiz at the MyBB support forum and it looks like people are having issues with phpBB to MyBB too. Not necessarily insurmountable issues, but not a no-brainer either. So going that route is probably just adding in extra problems in the long run.

[shadav]

not that it's really any much help but I was able to convert phpbb 3.3. (2 or 3 I forget which it was) to smf 2.0.17
and well....it mostly works....
the avatar folder was not converted, so you'll have to add that back in and then I was nice and went through and reuploaded users avs for them
and all of the mumbo jumbo in the posts was annoying
as mentioned a lot of <e>,<r>, <s>, <t> and <n> tags for no real reason
which could probably all be removed with some find and replaces
and most of the bbcode was converted to html...again some find and replaces would be a quick fix to that

the biggest issue I had was with links (either url or image) but I think that that was mostly due to installed extensions ... probably would be best to remove any extension from phpbb first....then you should be able to just do some find and replaces to fix all of the other issues with posts

I'm not gonna say it was easy....there was over 600 posts that I had to go through manually and fix, but again I think if you removed any extensions first it'd be a lot easier and should just be able to do find and replaces

[Dav999]

My interpretation of the weird tags is that they're just trying to make converting post contents to HTML as cheap as possible.

For example the URL tags:

Url formatting inside posts (ie: bbc_link class in SMF) is really bizarre:

Code Select Expand

<URL url=\"http://www.example.com/about.htm\"><s>[url=http://www.example.com/about.htm]</s>this page<e>[/url]</e></URL>

My guess is: any BBCode is placed between <s></s> and <e></e> ("start" and "end"?). So that for displaying the post, it doesn't need to do a full conversion from BBCode every time and it just strips those tags out, and when editing/quoting the post it strips all the HTML out. Though it does have some very non-standard HTML tags (QUOTE, EMOJI, URL), maybe that's still computationally cheaper for it to convert that to actual HTML in some way, or it does it in client-side Javascript? Maybe these tags are a middle ground where validity checks have already been done?

[Antechinus]

I agree about "start" and "end". The same thought had occurred to me. For our purposes it doesn't much matter why they did it. We just need to get rid of them (which isn't hard).

not that it's really any much help but I was able to convert phpbb 3.3. (2 or 3 I forget which it was) to smf 2.0.17
and well....it mostly works....

Which means it doesn't.

the avatar folder was not converted

That should be fixable. In principle it's just a matter of associating the correct images with the relevant usernames, all of which will already be in the database.

and all of the mumbo jumbo in the posts was annoying
as mentioned a lot of <e>,<r>, <s>, <t> and <n> tags for no real reason

There is obviously a reason for them. The phpBB devs may have an eccentric way of looking at things, but they're not stupid as such.

and most of the bbcode was converted to html...again some find and replaces would be a quick fix to that

Yup. First step is to catalogue all the possible glitches with tags.

I'm not gonna say it was easy....there was over 600 posts that I had to go through manually and fix, but again I think if you removed any extensions first it'd be a lot easier and should just be able to do find and replaces

Manual editing of posts is out of the question. It has to be done en masse.

[Antechinus]

Y'know, it just occurred to me (d'oh) that there should be a handy list of all these funny bits somewhere in the phpBB docs. I'm gonna do a bit of digging.

[Antechinus]

Righty-o then. Docs don't appear to be comprehensive and/or entirely up to date. Yay!

Anyway, line breaks are coded as:

Code Select Expand

<br/>\n
Which needs a simple replace with:

Code Select Expand

<br/>

Bold is done as:

Code Select Expand

<B><s>[b]</s>bold text here<e>[/b]</e></B>

Italic is:

Code Select Expand

<I><s>[i]</s>italic text here<e>[/i]</e></I>

Bold nested inside italic is:

Code Select Expand

<I><s>[i]</s><B><s>[b]</s>bold italic text here<e>[/b]</e></B><e>[/i]</e></I>

Standard smileys use an uppercase E tag around the smiley code:

Code Select Expand

<E>:lol:</E>

BBC colours are:

Code Select Expand

<COLOR color=\"red\"><s>[color=red]</s>red text here<e>[/color]</e></COLOR>

Code boxes are:

Code Select Expand

<CODE><s>[code]</s>00 00 02 00   00 00 00 00   00 00 00 00   00 04 00 04\n20 xx <e>[/ code]</e></CODE>

With the line breaks inside code tags apparently being done with \n rather than the standard HTML br tag. Which is a trap for young players. It means you can't just delete all instances of \n in the posts table. You'd only want to delete the ones that are directly preceded by a br tag.

Inline attachments are:

Code Select Expand

<ATTACHMENT filename=\"massive_lolcat.jpg\" index=\"0\"><s>[attachment=0]</s>massive_lolcat.jpg<e>[/attachment]</e></ATTACHMENT>

Most of these are pretty easy to deal with. The tricky ones are going to be in-post links, which are going to have varying url's in the middle of the gobbledegook.

Code Select Expand

<URL url=\"http://www.example.com/about.htm\"><s>[url=http://www.example.com/about.htm]</s>this page<e>[/url]</e></URL>
That's going to require a wildcard search to knock out the superfluous url tag in front of the s tag.

And then there's this weird shiznit:

Code Select Expand

<URL url=\"http://example.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&amp;t=811&amp;start=170#p42039\"><LINK_TEXT text=\"viewtopic.php?f=67&amp;t=811&amp;start=170#p42039\">http://example.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&amp;t=811&amp;start=170#p42039</LINK_TEXT></URL>

Not sure WTF that is supposed to be.

[Antechinus]

Just looking through Dougie's suggestions in this thread: Some easy fixes to the phpBB 3 to SMF 2 converter....

In phpBB, the size bbcode is used to specify what size the font should be in the form of a percentage.  SMF doesn't support this form and the converter tries to convert everything to pixels, which results in VERY LARGE letters!  So to fix this, we need to do a few things....

In phpbb3_to_smf.sql, find this:

Code Select Expand

'[size=$1px]',
Replace this line with the following:

Code Select Expand

'[size=$1]',
This changes the default "translation" of the size bbcode back to what it is in the phpBB board.....

There is a problem with doing this, as SMF doesn't recognize this usage of the size bbcode.  So, we have to add the phpBB-style Font Size BBCode mod in order to fix this minor issue.

Other alternative, which would most likely be fine in 99.9% of cases, and would save having to use the mod, would be to simply use this:

Code (Find) Select Expand

'[size=$1px]',

Code (Replace) Select Expand

'[size=1em]',

That way everything just becomes standard font-size. If you happen to notice anything particularly important that needs the font size different, it will be easy to edit. If you don't notice, it wasn't important anyway.