# Import from Gitter (beta)

Zulip supports importing data from Gitter, including users, channels,
messages, attachments, and avatars.

**Note:** You can only import a Gitter room as a new Zulip organization. In
particular, this tool you cannot use this tool to import from Gitter into an
existing Zulip organization.

## Import from Gitter

First, export your data from Gitter.

### Export your Gitter data

{start_tabs}

1. [Export your Gitter data](https://github.com/minrk/archive-gitter). You will
   receive json files of the public rooms that you are a part of.
   Select the `gitter_data.json` file of the room which you want to import into
   Zulip.

    !!! warn ""
        **Note:** You'll need a gitter API token to export data. You can get this
        token by following the instructions in the "**Getting Started**" section of the
        [gitter documentation](https://developer.gitter.im/docs/).

{end_tabs}

### Import into Zulip Cloud

Email support@zulip.com with `gitter_data.zip` and your desired
subdomain. Your imported organization will be hosted at
`<subdomain>.zulipchat.com`.

If you've already created a test organization at
`<subdomain>.zulipchat.com`, let us know, and we can rename the old
organization first.

### Import into a self-hosted Zulip server

First
[install a new Zulip server](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/stable/production/install.html),
skipping "Step 3: Create a Zulip organization, and log in" (you'll
create your Zulip organization via the data import tool instead).

Log in to a shell on your Zulip server as the `zulip` user. To import with
the most common configuration, run the following commands, replacing
`<token>` with the value generated above.

```
cd /home/zulip/deployments/current
supervisorctl stop all  # Stop the Zulip server
./manage.py convert_gitter_data gitter_data.json --output converted_gitter_data
./manage.py import '' converted_gitter_data
./scripts/restart-server
```

This could take several minutes to run, depending on how much data
you're importing.  The server stop/restart is only necessary when
importing on a server with minimal RAM, where an OOM kill might
otherwise occur.

**Import options**

The commands above create an imported organization on the root domain
(`EXTERNAL_HOST`) of the Zulip installation. You can also import into a
custom subdomain, e.g. if you already have an existing organization on the
root domain. Replace the last line above with the following, after replacing
`<subdomain>` with the desired subdomain.

```
./manage.py import <subdomain> converted_gitter_data
```

{!import-login.md!}

## Create organization administrators

The [Gitter API][gitter-api-user-data] don't contain data on which
users are administrators of the Gitter channel.  As a result, all
Gitter users are imported into Zulip as normal users.  You can follow
the Zulip documentation on
[making a user an administrator from the terminal][grant-admin-access]
to mark the appropriate users as administrators.

[grant-admin-access]: https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/management-commands.html#grant-administrator-access)
[gitter-api-user-data]: https://developer.gitter.im/docs/user-resource

## Caveats

- The [Gitter data export tool](https://github.com/minrk/archive-gitter)
  doesn't support exporting private gitter channels.

- Gitter's export tool doesn't export email addresses; just GitHub
  usernames.  The import tool will thus use [GitHub's generated
  noreply email addresses][github-noreply] to compute the
  GitHub-generated noreply email address associated with that GitHub
  account, e.g.
  `{github_user_id}+{github_username}@users.noreply.github.com` or
  `{github_username}@users.noreply.github.com`.

  Since one cannot receive email at those noreply email addresses,
  imported users will need to use GitHub authentication to log in to
  Zulip and will be unable to receive email notifications until they
  [change their Zulip email address](/help/change-your-email-address).

- You can merge multiple Gitter channels into a single Zulip
  organization using [this
  tool](https://github.com/minrk/archive-gitter/pull/5).

- This tool doesn't translate Gitter's Markdown format into Zulip
  format Markdown (there are a few corner cases where the syntax is
  different).  Additionally, Gitter's
  [issue mentions](https://gitter.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200176692-Issue-and-Pull-Request-mentions)
  aren't translated into anything yet.

[upgrade-zulip-from-git]: https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/upgrade-or-modify.html#upgrading-from-a-git-repository
[github-noreply]: https://docs.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-your-github-user-account/setting-your-commit-email-address