UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads 7 Importer Support Problem importing categories from UBB.Classic

I've been using UBB.Classic 6.3 for a long time, and decided, with 300k posts, to upgrade to UBB.Threads. I reindexed everything and successfully upgraded to UBB.Classic 6.7, and then installed PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and UBB.Threads. After getting all those new programs configured, and making it through the UBB.Threads setup scripts, I started importing my old UBB.Classic 6.7 data. Everything started out fine; it imported all of the member data without a hitch. But when it got to the 'classic_import.php?ubb=categories' page, it died with a simple message:

Importing category: "General Discussion (default)"

I don't have any categories, so I tried creating one (in UBB.Classic), and setting all the forums to use it. Same message. I put it back, and tried navigating to the 'classic_import.php?ubb=boards' page, but that just returns:

Importing forum: "shanesforum1"

Any ideas? Note that I've checked the returned HTML and found no error messages -- after the message is just <br />.

Also, is there an easy way to dump the contents of the MySQL database so I can try the import fresh again? As much as I know about VB, C#, and Access, I'm not a pro at MySQL or PHP.

Thanks in advance,

Shane

It *could* be that it's running into an error and php is configured to not display errors to the browser. If you have access to the php.ini file you can check this, I believe it's display_errors or something like that.

As for dumping the contents of the database and starting fresh. Basically all you need to do is drop all of the tables or the entire database if UBB.threads is the only thing inside and then rerun the install/createtable.php script.

Thanks, now I can see the error message. It is:

It seems that it isn't adding the word 'english' in the pathname. I checked the 'languages' page of the control panel; English is set as default and active. What should I check next?

p.s. Oops! It looks this thread should be under the Importing forum...

Looks like you don't have a default language set?

(languages//generic.php)

It looks that way, but English is set as default and active in the control panel. I'm hazarding a guess that line 799 in ubbthreads.inc.php should reference $config['LANGUAGE'] not $user['USER_LANGUAGE'], but I don't know. In any case, fixing that won't work, because it's trying to find the languages folder as a subfolder of the importers folder. And even if I copy the languages folder to the importers folder, I still get the Smarty error, and I have no idea how to fix or patch that.

Hmm, it's actually triggering the not_right error function which *should* never happen during an import. I need to see why that's happening as it should bypass that if an error is encountered and just display it in raw html.

FYI, the error was occuring in the first do_placeholder_query line after it echos the "Importing Category:" line (sorry, I don't know the line #). Apparently, it was trying to insert null values into the database (all three fields), which is not allowed. The source vars_cats.cgi file had only a CRLF in it, which I removed, and then the script ran fine and passed into the next stage - importing the forums. But now I'm stuck there with the exact same 'smarty' error -- probably another DB problem. It sure would help if it printed the errors! I'll keep you posted if I can figure out anything else. Please let me know if you find a way for the script to print the error messages. Thanks!

It seems that it couldn't import the forums because of a similar problem: it tried to insert a null value in the categoryid field, instead of inserting '1' in there. I patched it, and then it imported the forums and is now cheerfully importing posts upon posts...

I had already tried creating a category and assigning all the forums to it, but for some reason that didn't work. I would suggest that you update your import scripts to handle an empty vars_cats.cgi file and uncategorized forums -- and of course, show database errors so these problems can be fixed easier.

Thanks!

Shane

Rick,

Now I'm running into more errors while importing some of the posts. If you could track down that bug that's causing the database errors to be hidden (because it's trying to load the 'not_right' error function), it would sure make fixing these import scripts easier! I will keep you posted as I continue to diagnose my import.

Thanks,

Shane

Try doing the following in /libs/mysql.inc.php

Find: (Line 334)


Change to


Now, at the top of classic_import.php, add


This is obviously a kludge, but this should work. (If it doesn't, you just need to add more code various places)

Rick, I'm gonna send you my rewritten version of mysql.inc.php that handles this cleaner

That helps SOOOO much, thank you!

Now I know what my next problem is: "Data too long for column 'POST_BODY' at row 1"

I found the spot to insert the line of code, but I don't know PHP. Can anyone translate this code to PHP for me? (I've done a mockup in VB/C)

if (Len($raw_post) > MAX_POST_LENGTH) {
$raw_post = Left($raw_post, MAX_POST_LENGTH)
}

Also, I don't know what the maximum posting length is. I examined the field with PHPMyAdmin, but it didn't seem to show a maximum length for the field. As the field is of type 'text', I'm actually surprised that there's a length limitation at all.

Thanks in advance,

Shane

If you have a lot of long posts, you can change the length of the POST_BODY and POST_DEFAULT_BODY fields to hold a longer value. By default, text fields will hold 65,535 characters.

If you want to allow more, you can alter the database with the following SQL command:

alter table ubbt_POSTS change POST_BODY mediumtext, change POST_DEFAULT_BODY mediumtext

Thanks, I edited the createtable.php script and started fresh; it's importing now.