Automated Media Wiki Page Creation

May 15, 2007 10:32 AM

How can I automate importing thousands of CSV files (or 1 large CSV file) into a MediaWiki installation?

As part of my summer internship I was charged with moving thousands of knowledge base articles into our MediaWiki installation. The files will be exported from an old ERP system as either 1 large CSV file containing all files or 1 CSV for each article. I can perform some manipulation on them but the less the better. All of the articles are simply plain text, but some do contain links to files located on a Windows share. Ideally, I am looking for some sort of plugin but any information would be helpful.

Right now I am planning to manipulate the files into XML (through Perl or Python) and upload them to MediaWiki using their "Special:Import page". However, even with this process, I would need a way to automate the "Browse/Upload" procedure, and I have never done anything like that. So help with that would be appreciated as well.

If this is not clear or more information is needed, please let me know. Thanks in advance.

posted by coolin86 to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Well, I'd be half inclined to just get someone to do it for you if you can - the expertise required might be beyond your scope of ability, and for the uninitiated I could understand it to be quite a daunting task.

You'd very likely have to write your own importing script to push the data from a uploaded CSV folder right into the database.
posted by rc55 at 12:36 PM on May 15, 2007

There's a cpan module that lets you update mediawiki pages. I used it for doing the same thing. I can send you my code if you need something to start from.
posted by frieze at 12:52 PM on May 15, 2007

I think you can use import dump.
posted by seanyboy at 3:59 PM on May 15, 2007