zulip/templates/zerver/help/import-from-gitter.md

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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.

  1. Export your Gitter data. 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.

Import into zulipchat.com

Email support@zulipchat.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, 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
./manage.py convert_gitter_data gitter_data.json --output converted_gitter_data
./manage.py import '' converted_gitter_data

This could take several minutes to run, depending on how much data you're importing.

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/maintain-secure-upgrade.html#grant-administrator-access) [gitter-api-user-data]: https://developer.gitter.im/docs/user-resource

Caveats

  • The Gitter data export tool doesn't support exporting private gitter channels.

  • This tool doesn't yet support merging importing Gitter channels into a single Zulip organization.

  • 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 aren't translated into anything yet.