[[!toc levels=2]]
+[[!meta date="2008-10-20 16:55:38 -0400"]]
-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.
The following instructions describe ways of obtaining the current version of
the wiki. We do not yet cover importing the history of edits.
+Another set of instructions and conversion tools (which imports the full history)
+can be found at <http://github.com/mithro/media2iki>
+
## Step 1: Getting a list of pages
The first bit of information you require is a list of pages in the Mediawiki.
you have tweaked your mediawiki theme a lot from the original, you will need
to adjust this script too:
+ import sys
from xml.dom.minidom import parse, parseString
- dom = parse(argv[1])
+ dom = parse(sys.argv[1])
tables = dom.getElementsByTagName("table")
pagetable = tables[-1]
anchors = pagetable.getElementsByTagName("a")
for a in anchors:
print a.firstChild.toxml().\
- replace('&,'&').\
+ replace('&','&').\
replace('<','<').\
replace('>','>')
Note that by default, `Special:Allpages` will only list pages in the main
namespace. You need to add a `&namespace=XX` argument to get pages in a
-different namespace. The following numbers correspond to common namespaces:
-
- * 10 - templates (`Template:foo`)
- * 14 - categories (`Category:bar`)
+different namespace. (See below for the default list of namespaces)
Note that the page names obtained this way will not include any namespace
specific prefix: e.g. `Category:` will be stripped off.
### 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.
+stored, it is possible to derive a list of page names from this. With mediawiki's
+MySQL backend, the page table is, appropriately enough, called `table`:
+
+ SELECT page_namespace, page_title FROM page;
+
+As with the previous method, you will need to do some filtering based on the
+namespace.
+
+### namespaces
+
+The list of default namespaces in mediawiki is available from <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Namespace#Built-in_namespaces>. Here are reproduced the ones you are most likely to encounter if you are running a small mediawiki install for your own purposes:
+
+[[!table data="""
+Index | Name | Example
+0 | Main | Foo
+1 | Talk | Talk:Foo
+2 | User | User:Jon
+3 | User talk | User_talk:Jon
+6 | File | File:Barack_Obama_signature.svg
+10 | Template | Template:Prettytable
+14 | Category | Category:Pages_needing_review
+"""]]
## Step 2: fetching the page data
It is possible to extract the page data from the database with some
well-crafted queries.
-## Step 2: format conversion
+## Step 3: format conversion
The next step is to convert Mediawiki conventions into Ikiwiki ones.
pattern = r'\[\[Category:([^\]]+)\]\]'
def manglecat(mo):
- return '[[!tag %s]]' % mo.group(1).strip().replace(' ','_')
+ return '\[[!tag %s]]' % mo.group(1).strip().replace(' ','_')
for line in sys.stdin.readlines():
res = re.match(pattern, line)
sys.stdout.write(re.sub(pattern, manglecat, line))
else: sys.stdout.write(line)
-## Step 3: 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
+
+### Step 4b: Converting pages
-[[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.
+#### 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
+
+### media2iki
+
+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).
+
+### mediawiki2gitikiwiki (ruby)
+
+[[Albert]] wrote a ruby script to convert from mediawiki's database to ikiwiki at <https://github.com/docunext/mediawiki2gitikiwiki>
+
+### levitation (xml to git)
+
+[[scy]] wrote a python script to convert from mediawiki XML dumps to git repositories at <https://github.com/scy/levitation>.
+
+### git-mediawiki
+
+There's now support for mediawiki as a git remote:
+
+<https://github.com/moy/Git-Mediawiki/wiki>
+
+### mediawikigitdump
+[[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>