[[!toc levels=2]]
-Mediawiki is a dynamically-generated wiki which stores it's data in a
+Mediawiki is a dynamically-generated wiki which stores its 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.
sys.stdout.write(re.sub(pattern, manglecat, line))
else: sys.stdout.write(line)
-## Step 4: Mediawiki plugin
+## Step 4: Mediawiki plugin or Converting to Markdown
+
+You can use a plugin to make ikiwiki support Mediawiki syntax, or you can
+convert pages to a format ikiwiki understands.
+
+### Step 4a: Mediawiki plugin
The [[plugins/contrib/mediawiki]] plugin can be used by ikiwiki to interpret
most of the Mediawiki syntax.
-## External links
+The following things are not working:
+
+* templates
+* tables
+* spaces and other funky characters ("?") in page names
-[[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. A copy of the
-information found on this website is stored at <http://github.com/mithro/media2iki>
+### Step 4b: Converting pages
+#### Converting to Markdown
+There is a Python script for converting from the Mediawiki format to Markdown in [[mithro]]'s conversion repository at <http://github.com/mithro/media2iki>. *WARNING:* While the script tries to preserve everything is can, Markdown syntax is not as flexible as Mediawiki so the conversion is lossy!
+
+ # The script needs the mwlib library to work
+ # If you don't have easy_install installed, apt-get install python-setuptools
+ sudo easy_install mwlib
+
+ # Get the repository
+ git clone git://github.com/mithro/media2iki.git
+ cd media2iki
+
+ # Do a conversion
+ python mediawiki2markdown.py --no-strict --no-debugger <my mediawiki file> > output.md
+
+
+[[mithro]] doesn't frequent this page, so please report issues on the [github issue tracker](https://github.com/mithro/media2iki/issues).
+
+## Scripts
+
+There is a repository of tools for converting MediaWiki to Git based Markdown wiki formats (such as ikiwiki and github wikis) at <http://github.com/mithro/media2iki>. It also includes a standalone tool for converting from the Mediawiki format to Markdown. [[mithro]] doesn't frequent this page, so please report issues on the [github issue tracker](https://github.com/mithro/media2iki/issues).
+
+[[Albert]] wrote a ruby script to convert from mediawiki's database to ikiwiki at <https://github.com/docunext/mediawiki2gitikiwiki>
+
+[[scy]] wrote a python script to convert from mediawiki XML dumps to git repositories at <https://github.com/scy/levitation>.
+
+[[Anarcat]] wrote a python script to convert from a mediawiki website to ikiwiki at git://src.anarcat.ath.cx/mediawikigitdump.git/. The script doesn't need any special access or privileges and communicates with the documented API (so it's a bit slower, but allows you to mirror sites you are not managing, like parts of Wikipedia). The script can also incrementally import new changes from a running site, through RecentChanges inspection. It also supports mithro's new Mediawiki2markdown converter (which I have a copy here: git://src.anarcat.ath.cx/media2iki.git/).
+
+> Some assembly is required to get Mediawiki2markdown and its mwlib
+> gitmodule available in the right place for it to use.. perhaps you could
+> automate that? --[[Joey]]
+
+> > You mean a debian package? :) media2iki is actually a submodule, so you need to go through extra steps to install it. mwlib being the most annoying part... I have fixed my script so it looks for media2iki directly in the submodule and improved the install instructions in the README file, but I'm not sure I can do much more short of starting to package the whole thing... --[[anarcat]]
+
+>>> You may have forgotten to push that, I don't see those changes.
+>>> Packaging the python library might be a good 1st step.
+>>> --[[Joey]]
+
+> Also, when I try to run it with -t on www.amateur-radio-wiki.net, it
+> fails on some html in the page named "4_metres". On archiveteam.org,
+> it fails trying to write to a page filename starting with "/", --[[Joey]]
+
+> > can you show me exactly which commandline arguments you're using? also, I have made improvements over the converter too, also available here: git://src/anarcat.ath.cx/media2iki.git/ -- [[anarcat]]
+
+>>> Not using your new converter, just the installation I did earlier
+>>> today:
+>>> --[[Joey]]
+
+<pre>
+fetching page 4 metres from http://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net//index.php?action=raw&title=4+metres into 4_metres.mdwn
+Unknown tag TagNode tagname='div' vlist={'style': {u'float': u'left', u'border': u'2px solid #aaa', u'margin-left': u'20px'}}->'div' div
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 298, in <module>
+ fetch_allpages(namespace)
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 82, in fetch_allpages
+ fetch_page(page.getAttribute('title'))
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 187, in fetch_page
+ c.parse(urllib.urlopen(url).read())
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 285, in parse
+ self.parse_node(ast)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 76, in parse_node
+ f(node)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 88, in on_article
+ self.parse_children(node)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 83, in parse_children
+ self.parse_node(child)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 76, in parse_node
+ f(node)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 413, in on_section
+ self.parse_node(child)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 76, in parse_node
+ f(node)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 83, in parse_children
+ self.parse_node(child)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 76, in parse_node
+ f(node)
+ File "/home/joey/tmp/mediawikigitdump/mediawiki2markdown.py", line 474, in on_tagnode
+ assert not options.STRICT
+AssertionError
+zsh: exit 1 ./mediawikigitdump.py -v -t http://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/
+</pre>
+
+<pre>
+joey@wren:~/tmp/mediawikigitdump>./mediawikigitdump.py -v -t http://archiveteam.org
+fetching page list from namespace 0 ()
+found 222 pages
+fetching page /Sites using MediaWiki (English) from http://archiveteam.org/index.php?action=raw&title=%2FSites+using+MediaWiki+%28English%29 into /Sites_using_MediaWiki_(English).mdwn
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 298, in <module>
+ fetch_allpages(namespace)
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 82, in fetch_allpages
+ fetch_page(page.getAttribute('title'))
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 188, in fetch_page
+ f = open(filename, 'w')
+IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: u'/Sites_using_MediaWiki_(English).mdwn'
+zsh: exit 1 ./mediawikigitdump.py -v -t http://archiveteam.org
+</pre>
+
+> > > > > I have updated my script to call the parser without strict mode and to trim leading slashes (and /../, for that matter...) -- [[anarcat]]
+
+> > > > > > Getting this error with the new version on any site I try (when using -t only): `TypeError: argument 1 must be string or read-only character buffer, not None`
+> > > > > > bisecting, commit 55941a3bd89d43d09b0c126c9088eee0076b5ea2 broke it.
+> > > > > > --[[Joey]]
+
+> > > > > > > I can't reproduce here, can you try with -v or -d to try to trace down the problem? -- [[anarcat]]
+
+<pre>
+fetching page list from namespace 0 ()
+found 473 pages
+fetching page 0 - 9 from http://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/index.php?action=raw&title=0+-+9 into 0_-_9.mdwn
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 304, in <module>
+ main()
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 301, in main
+ fetch_allpages(options.namespace)
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 74, in fetch_allpages
+ fetch_page(page.getAttribute('title'))
+ File "./mediawikigitdump.py", line 180, in fetch_page
+ f.write(options.convert(urllib.urlopen(url).read()))
+TypeError: argument 1 must be string or read-only character buffer, not None
+zsh: exit 1 ./mediawikigitdump.py -v -d -t http://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/
+</pre>