Hello!

[SignalAffairs]

I've been stalking your forums for a few weeks unable to register here until I sent Bob an email and he helped me out. I found this place by Googling "Taparip" after I found Labsters script on Github. I'm hoping I can get some help saving my forums that got taken over by Tapatalk. I want to be able to backup the forums into a MySQL database in a phpBB format so I can then import them to my new board. Or at least have a way to convert the database into a phpBB format. Whatever I have to do to make it work. Oh and I like to sleep in late when I can. Caffeine is my friend, without her in my life I'm vicious. The end. Feel free to ask me 20 questions!


- SignalAffairs

[Norgarth]

*waves* hiya!

[classicdrogn]

Hi Signal, and welcome. Stick around and poke the fiction forums a bit if you like sci-fi, superheroes, anime, BtVS, and/or Harry Potter, there's a fair bit of all of those and more in the Recommendations/Updates threads and our original shared projects (Fenspace and There's Nothing Better,) and it's always fun to see a new face (well, you know what I mean) join in the general chatter as well. Bob's Drunkard's Walk and game writing that the forums are nominally in support of is great too, of course! Oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be an easy link from the fuorums despite being hosted on the same site... well, that's an easy fix:

What's all the hubbub, bub?

Note that the "Latest Update: 10 November 2017" on that page is itself out of date to the best of my memory; though it could have been the previews and scrapped scenes posted in the story forums throwing me off I'm fairly sure there's been at least a couple of finished parts released in that time.

[robkelk]

Hello, and welcome!

We have a few programmer types who can probably help you with that script. Alas, I'm not one of them...

[Bob Schroeck]

Glad to see you had no problems getting in, Signal. Welcome to the forums proper.

I suppose I should have told you this over email, but basically what Taparip gets is three tables holding a detailed set of threads, messages and users -- the tables had a lot more info than I realized could be scraped from the pages of the board -- but in an arbitrary format for compactness, stored in SQLite format. I ended up writing a Rube Goldberg machine of SQL queries and stored procs that moved the data out of SQLite into Microsoft T-SQL and from there into MySQL, using T-SQL procs to actually write new queries which put the board data into the MyBB tables. (Which I did because SQLite didn't support half the stuff I wanted/needed to use, like cursors.)

I had a few false starts and accidentally wiped the new board once in the process, but it eventually got done over the course of a couple-three weeks. If I were doing it all again from scratch I'd probably do a better job, as I left behind a lot of information (like "last edited" info on messages) that while not necessary would have been nice to preserve. (Theoretically I could still pull that info out of the SQLite DB and put it into the board DB, but it would be far more work than it's worth as I didn't save the correspondences between threads and messages from Crapatalk and the new threads and messages here.)

Anyway, you're welcome to my horrendously complicated and baroque scripts if you like; they might save you a little time in figuring out how to do things for yourself.

[Labster]

Welcome. Sorry that the script isn't designed to be user friendly. There are some days I regret putting it online, because it's turned into long term support for a product I haven't used in years... but on the other hand I'm happy to see other people leaving Tapatalk.

(Which I did because SQLite didn't support half the stuff I wanted/needed to use, like cursors.)

Now I'm curious to see them, because why did you need cursors?

SignalAffairs, how technically adept are you? Are you familiar with the command line? Basic Linux use? Web design? Databases? Dynamic programming languages? Any of those are helpful. All of those and... well, my company is hiring, lol.

One of the things I had to do was make a MyBB converter for this site, but a phpBB converter should not be terribly different. Although, uh, in retrospect, I should have used a recursive descent parser rather than do what I did. Still, there wasn't too much breakage once everything got imported.

[Bob Schroeck]

And what breakage occurred was mainly my fault, not Labster's.

And while there may have been a better way to do things, I used cursors because I was stepping through one thread at a time, recreating it in the new database and then moving its posts over one at a time, in order. One reason I did it that way is it let me control exactly what I was moving when and gave me some "undo" ability. (I gave the T-SQL copies of the tables a "moved" bit column that let me track exactly what I'd ported over and what I hadn't -- and I wrote the scripts such that I could say, basically, "move 5 threads from General Chatter".) The messy part was that my T-SQL scripts wrote MySQL scripts that I then copy/pasted over to my ISP's phpMyAdmin control panel, since they didn't permit me to do direct uploads.

Yeah, a lot of the stuff I did, I did because the tools I had wouldn't let me do it in an easier way.

[SignalAffairs]

Hello everyone! Thank you for all the kind replies since I am a total stranger.    I'll certainly look around the forums as I do like sci-fi, superheroes and anime.
 
Labster, I am ashamed to admit I am a total newb. I have started to learn a little HTML out of necessity to re-make an old gaming site (online multiplayer group) and forums (Tapatalk, was invisionfree) some friends and I frequented. The most I've learned there is about domain names and how to forward them. Buying hosting and using cPanel. Uploading all my html files then uploading/installing phpBB 3 and setting up a forum board. I am familiar enough with the command line that I have done basic network commands like ipconfig, release/renewing addresses, flushing DNS, ping, tracert, nslookup, ect. Linux usage for me would be installing Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Knoppix and using them on a regular basis. The most troubleshooting I had to do there was with my wifi drivers. That is just me experimenting over the years trying to get away from Windows. I have no knowledge of databases or dynamic programming languages yet. Looking at your Taparip script terrifies me. I would need some hand holding 

[Bob Schroeck]

Don't be ashamed. I needed handholding, too. Probably more than Labster cared to give sometimes.

[Labster]

As a wizard, I hate to be disturbed by all of these random adventurers visiting my tower asking for help.

To be fair, most code programmed for a single use is terrifying.

And thanks for using cPanel, I have some friends who work there.

Anyway, the first step is to set up the software. I think I made it support the old macOS version of Perl at someone's request, 5.18. You probably should have it installed on Macs or Linux boxen, but you can get perl from Homebrew or apt-get if you use them, or you can just download with Perlbrew. Then you need download the Taparip repository from Github -- either with git clone, or one of the download options shown on Github. Also install Sqlite. The things on the requirements part of the readme.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'll note that it also works on at least one Windows implementation of Perl, as I used it to grab the last few threads and messages posted to the old forums before I closed them down.

[SignalAffairs]

Hi! Okay so I have Ubuntu installed with the latest version of Perl, Sqlite 3 and the Taparip repository.

[Bob Schroeck]

Actually, since we've long ago moved into discussion of the hows and whats of using Taparip instead of introductions, we should take this to a thread in the General/General area.