Forum module: Discussion thread for converting PHPBB data

Just an update on what I have so far.

Using information in here and some stuff I have learned on my own I have devised a script that will

1. Convert the members from PHPBB to members in Expression Engine.
2. Convert topics and posts and place them in their relevant categories.
3. Rebuild the total topics/total posts/last post id, last post title and last post date for all posts
4. Removes the blank post at the beginning of each converted topic (a structural difference between PHPBB and EE)

What I have yet to do:

1. Convert Polls. This looks like it’s going to be a lot of un-fun, but I’m comitted to doing it, so it’ll get done.
2. Convert Private Messages. This should be fairly simple.

One other thing I have noticed is that some BBCode isn’t recognized. Specifically if you have [img] BBCode - EE doesn’t handle this at all. Are there plans to support [img] in the future? If not, I may try to come up with a way to convert [img] stuff into the full HTML reference so that there isn’t junk floating around.

It is currently converting data from PHPBB 2.0.21 to EE Forum 1.3.2. (The latest stable builds of both to my knowledge as of this post).

Is there anything anyone else can think of that I should look at?

Ok - I’m on a tear.

I have it converting polls now. I need to do some more extensive testing of this script but it’s about 90% of where I want it.

I’ll post my work at some point tomorrow and we can all go from there.

Hey Everyone;

Ok - so I am tweeking my import script and I’ve discovered something I just have to ask about.

I’ve noticed that within the forum structure, the forum order affects the placement of where all of the forums are regardless of their categorization. This doesn’t seem to be a logical convention to follow when ordering based on the database structure. Would it not be more logical to present these using some kind of recursive logic that translates the parent-child relationships between the forum_id and forum_parent and then sort by the internal forum_order as it applies to each parent/child combination?

It’s a bit of a pain to have to write a translation to this. It has to be done otherwise there is a chance that the import will appear as if it didn’t work when in reality it’s because of this compensation for the structure in EE that this has to happen.

I’m adjusting my import script to compensate for this - but I was just wondering if there was any kind of explanation as to the logic behind approaching the parent/child relationships of the forums in this manner.

Here is my preliminary release of this script. I’ve used this and one other slightly tweeked one to convert a PHPBB v2.0.21 web site and a PostNuke 0.7.0 with PHPBB Module to Expression Engine as successfully as I can determine.

I am releasing this under a BSD-Style license, mostly as a disclaimer and indemnification against data loss. USE THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

You can find it at: ElusiveMind.Net

mbagnall, this is cool. We came up with a similar solution prior to your release. We migrated the DB from PHPBB 2.0.8 to EE Forum 1.3.1

We could migrate everything except for the member permissions which is a chore because of different system designs. If anyone interested in that I can throw in the source.

@mbagnall: Thank you for sharing your script. It seems very promising that you already succefully migrated the data from phpBB to EE. Could you tell us if there’s any data that’s not imported correct? Is there any? Did you manage to migrate settings? Profiles?

@angelday: If you could share the source for your script, it sure would help others to understand what’s going on. I’m still looking for the best ways to do this, so I can use all the help I can get. Did you solve the problem with the “empty first post” as well?

Overall, I’m just looking for your experiences…

Some of this is documented in the comments at the top of the script and some isn’t. I have migrated all data as it relates to members, topics and posts. This includes conversion of polls as well. I did not convert overall forum settings as yet. Since EE has fewer options, I figured it may be just as easy to re-configure the board as it would be to import the settings. By re-configuring the settings it makes you become at least somewhat familiar with the differences between PHPBB’s control panel and EE’s.

I also did not convert private messages. This was mostly because in my particular application, conversion of private messages wasn’t a priority. I understand how PM’s work and could do it - I just chose not to at this time.

The data that is imported seems to be imported correctly the best I can tell. I overcame some pretty significant differences between the way data is stored in PHPBB and the way it is stored in EE (such as parent/child relationships between forum categories and forum’s themselves) and calculation of last post data.

I did all of this in about 8 hours… so it’s far from battle proven, but it did work successfully on the two forums I tested it on.

Ronny, ya, we resolved the empty first post thing as well. Private messages have been converted, too. Currently the source availability is “very limited”, which means that it’s not documented well enough and several test options have been left inside. I’ll get it done and post ASAP.

Here it is: REMOVED

Everything has been explained in “convert.php” – please DO READ the PHP file.

Cool thanks!! I’ll try. Had a lot of people who want to switch from PHPBB to EE, now i can 😊

angel - This looks good, but it seems focused on moving phpBB data to a newly installed EE Forum. What about if I have had my forum running since the day the module became available? Can it import into existing forums, or is that too risky to try?

angel - This looks good, but it seems focused on moving phpBB data to a newly installed EE Forum. What about if I have had my forum running since the day the module became available? Can it import into existing forums, or is that too risky to try?

Well, it was written for our purposes, target was a fresh EE install. I wouldn’t recommend running it on a db which contains data of any sort, please consider yourself warned.

The only reason I’m providing a download link is because we have been struggling with this issue for months now. Seeing the available options we decided to do the grunt job ourselves.

Releasing a tested, documented and working import plugin would require the same amount of work we had already put into this, so I cannot promise that.

I’m hoping somebody will eventually catch-on and do this for the community.

For what it’s worth, I would pay for a tool that DID import into an existing EE Forum. I am sure there are others that would as well.

I’m looking into it, but I cannot promise anything.