This is a description of how to migrate an existing TWiki datastore to DokuWiki ready text files. I am in the process of migrating our 1000+ page TWiki site into DokuWiki and created this shell script to assist in the transition.

• An existing TWiki site
• Shell access on a Linux/UNIX box
• Perl
• Test

This script is able to translate the following items from TWiki Markup Language (TML) to DokuWiki:

• TWiki %META Information
• Attachments
• Monospaced/Bold Monospaced Text
• Headings
• Unordered Lists
• Bold, Italic, Bold-Italic Text
• <b>, <i>, <u> to Doku syntax
• TML <verbatim>
• TML <nop>
• Table Headings

• I highly recommend running this script on a copy of your existing TWiki site…but that goes without saying.
• Assuming your copied TWiki data is in /twikibackup remove all the RCS ,v files. DokuWiki does not need them.

  • find twikibackup -name "*,v" -exec rm -f {} \;

• Save the code below into a file with a .sh extension e.g. twikiconverter.sh. The filename does not matter.
• Open a terminal window and browse to the directory into which you saved the twikiconverter.sh file.
• Change the permission of this file to allow execution

  • chmod u+x ./twikiconverter.sh

• From the terminal, run the twikiconverter.sh script against a file or set of files

  • ./twikiconverter.sh TwikDocument1.txt or ./twikiconverter.sh *.txt

• Thats it! All of your TWiki documents are now DokuWiki documents ready for importation into your new Wiki.

#!/bin/bash
#Twiki to DokuWiki Converter
#Developed by Ben Chapman <bkchapman atgmaildotcom>
#Licensed under the GPL: (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt)
 
 
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 twikifilename.txt or *.txt "
exit
fi
 
INPUT=$*
 
# Removing carriage returns
perl -pi -e 's/\r//g' $*
 
# Stripping Twiki %META information
perl -ni -e "print unless /^\s*%META:TOPIC*/;" $*
 
# Converting attachments
# Replace replaceme with the name of your namespace
perl -pi -e "s/\%META\:FILEATTACHMENT\{name\=\"/\{{replaceme\:/g" $*
perl -pi -e "s/\" attr\=\"\" comment\=\"/\|/g" $*
perl -pi -e 's/\" date\=\".+/}}/g' $*
 
# Converting monospaced text
perl -pi -e "s/\=/''/g" $*
 
# Converting bold, monospaced text
perl -pi -e "s/^\=\=/**''/g" $*
perl -pi -e "s/$\=\=/''**/g" $*
 
# Adding DokuWiki syntax to the headings
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\s.*|---\+\w.*)/====== $1 ======/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\s.*|---\+\+\w.*)/===== $1 =====/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\+\s.*|---\+\+\+\w.*)/==== $1 ====/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\+\+\s.*|---\+\+\+\+\w.*)/=== $1 ===/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\+\+\+\s.*|---\+\+\+\+\+\w.*)/== $1 ==/g' $*
 
# Removing TML from the headings
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\+\+\+\s|---\+\+\+\+\+)//g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\+\+\s|---\+\+\+\+)//g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\+\s|---\+\+\+)//g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\+\s|---\+\+)//g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/(---\+\s|---\+)//g' $*
 
# Converting unordered lists
# I'm using %^ as a placeholder so the 
# bold conversion below does not mess with
# our lists. Don't worry it gets fixed below.
perl -pi -e 's/\t\t\t\*/      \%\^/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/\t\t\*/    \%\^/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/\t\*/   \%\^/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/            \*/        \%\^/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/         \*/      \%\^/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/      \*/    \%\^/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/   \*/  \%\^/g' $*
 
# Twiki's support for ordered lists is pretty
# weak...not worth trying to script.
 
# Converting bold-italic text
perl -pi -e 's/^\_{2}/\/\/\*\*/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/$\_{2}/\*\*\/\//g' $*
 
# Converting italic text
perl -pi -e 's/(^\_{1})/\/\//g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/$\_{1}\s/\/\//g' $*
 
# Converting bold text
perl -pi -e 's/\*{1}| \*{1}/\*\*/g' $*
 
# Unordered lists are broken...fixing
perl -pi -e 's/\%\^/\*/g' $*
 
# Converting TML <verbatim> to Doku <file>
# You could use <code> but I like the highlighting
# of <file> better...your choice
perl -pi -e 's/<verbatim>/<file>/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/<\/verbatim>/<\/file>/g' $*
 
# Removing <nop>...no more CamelCase
perl -pi -e 's/<nop>//g' $*
 
# Converting <b></b> to Doku bold
perl -pi -e 's/<b>/\*\*/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/<\/b>/\*\*/g' $*
 
# Converting <i></i> to Doku italic
perl -pi -e 's/<i>/\/\//g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/<\/i>/\/\//g' $*
 
# Converting <u></u> to Doku underline
perl -pi -e 's/<u>/__/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/<\/u>/__/g' $*
 
# Converting table headings
perl -pi -e 's/\| \*\*/\^  /g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/\*\*  \^/  \^/g' $*
perl -pi -e 's/\*\*  \|/  \^/g' $*
 
exit 0

• This script was written to convert TML from TWiki circa 2001. I don't think the syntax has changed that much, but if it does not work exactly as you would like take a look at the source and correct where needed.
• It just so happens that TML for tables and Doku syntax for tables is almost identical, so a quick modification to the header is all that was needed.
• If you don't need to convert a certain feature, simply comment out the code using a #. Look at the code for examples.
• This converted my 1000+ page TWiki site in about 30-45 seconds on a standard Dell P4. Once you start the script you won't get any feedback from your Terminal. You could open another window and check top - you should see the perl process running at about 40-60%.
• If you have questions my e-mail is in the source code.
• Good Luck!

— Ben Chapman

• If you are running this script on Windows, you may encounter the “Can't do inplace edit without backup” error. You can fix this by replacing “perl -pi” by “perl -p -i'.bak'” and “perl -ni” by “perl -n -i'.bak'”. This will create backup files with “.bak” extension that you can remove afterwards,