How do people write scripts that convert forums to other forums?

[eclipse]

Is it simply by knowing SQL? You know, all the big forums have converters to the other big forums, and it's like finding which forum has the converter to YOUR forum of choice. I recently found someone who went from SMF to phpbb to bbpress.

But how do these things get written in the first place? SQL? And if SQL, are we talking about "for dummies" after say 3 hours of Lynda training, or we are talking about really advanced proficient SQL experience?

 

[notjustjay]

Well, very basically, all forums contain the same types of data:

You have users -- users have names, email addresses, birthdays, etc.

You have forums -- forums have descriptions, moderators, etc. Forums contain posts (and other forums).

You have posts -- posts have an author, a subject, and a blob of text.

Each forum package stores those things in some their own database (SQL). To convert from one to another, you just need to know the way that each package stores the data, and then you just read the records from one database, translate them and store them as a record in the format used by the other database.

 

[eclipse]

Each forum package stores those things in some their own database (SQL). To convert from one to another, you just need to know the way that each package stores the data, and then you just read the records from one database, translate them and store them as a record in the format used by the other database.

So is SQL how they do that... how they "read the records". How do we tell how they are stored?

 

[notjustjay]

So is SQL how they do that... how they "read the records". How do we tell how they are stored?

You would either examine the databases they create, and work it out yourself based on the names of the database columns (and/or by examining the contents of a few records), or ideally, you have access to some developer documentation that describes the database format.

I suggest you work through an SQL tutorial if you are thinking of playing with SQL. While the concepts are simple, there's a lot to learn and understand about how databases are created and stored, and how to use SQL commands to access the information you need.