Importing

Start

Basic download script base:

• http://codex.journal-press.com/Ljdump

I don't know anything about scripting, so I don't know if either of the below would be better or worse for our purposes. But

• ljmigrate is based on the ljdump code, captures usericons as well, and has the ability to import to lj-based systems.
• ljsm is a python script which captures usericons and posted images, in addition to entries and comments.

Examples

Good to look at Schwartz workers for reference. Possibilities:

• Worker for privacy conversion -- long running task limited to not kill the DB. bin/worker/process-privacy, LJ::MassPrivacy
• bin/worker/paidstatus - the schwartz 'shell', that declares the job. it imports the module DW::Worker::PaidStatus
• cgi-bin/DW/Worker/PaidStatus.pm - the actual worker; jobs can either succeed, fail permanently, fail temporarily. note the helper subs at the bottom of that module that define the schwartz parameters for retries, etc.
• cgi-bin/DW/Worker/Payment.pm - search for PaidStatus, line 90 -- you'll see the calling convention for creating a new schwartz job and passing arguments
• bin/test-pay - a generic script for testing the payment system

Rough Implementation Guide

1. create a new DW::Worker::ContentDownloader module (or something, name doesn't matter much)
2. create the simple bin/worker/contentdownloader that wraps the module; this is almost a carbon copy of existing bin/worker/paidstatus etc
3. create a test script that lets you insert a job. the test script can be really simple, something like: bin/test-content-downloader --insert-job xb95, and then the script would have four lines of code, one of which is that line 90 from Payment.pm referenced above, i.e., create the job, give it the arguments
4. then, you can test that your pipeline works by running the worker in debug mode... um, bin/worker/contentdownloader --debug I think. You probably have to do perl -I/home/dw/cgi-bin bin/worker/contentdownloader --debug to get the include path setup right
5. anyway, once all that works - your job is working, your module is getting called, etc, then you can pretty easily drop in a call out to the download script. system("/path/to/python", "/path/to/script", "--username", "xb95"); and then worry about error checking, timeout checking, and all the million failure cases

Ideal Process

1. run the content downloader,
2. copy data to mogile
3. mark the user as 'downloaded'
4. run content importer

Other Ideas

• exor674 I think one of the things we'd need to add for the import feature is a external-logid logprop, so if somebody tries to import twice you won't get twice of the entries -- AND the systen can know "oh DW entry 1 was originally livejournal.com-exor674-5827377212221211"
• "Imported from" tag and link
• Options: "import tags, tag prefix, tag suffix" "import comments"? "import friend groups, tag prefix, tag suffix" "import all as *security*"

Importing Comments

• Copyright issues. Idea from azurelunatic:

Supposing comments belonging to others were imported and privately posted, and comments belonging to the user were imported and posted according to their current screening setting in proper threads with the private comments. This would allow a maximum amount of the user's own content to show up.

Supposing also that the comment screening mechanism were modified to handle privately-posted imported comments. This would be done according to the screening settings on the original post: if unscreened on the original, someone OpenID-authenticated as the original comment poster could elect to own and unprivatescreen comments belonging to them.

After this point, the journal owner could screen/unscreen the comment at will.

To make this work better, imported comments should be listed somewhere that the OpenID owner of the comments could find them and possibly mass-unprivatescreen/take ownership.

[Business decision from rahaeli:

If someone is importing their journal directly from another site, by giving us their username and password for that site, import all comments as OpenID comments with the same screening/visibility level that the original comment had.

If someone is importing their journal from downloaded backup file, import all comments as OpenID comments screened, frozen, visible only to the journal owner and the OpenID identity that made the comment, and unable to be unscreened/unfrozen by the journal owner him/herself, only the OpenID identity. That way, the OpenID identity holder can verify that their words haven't been edited offline.

Either way, it would be very very nice if there were a place where an OpenID identity could go and see all their OpenID comments that have been imported and take ownership of them under a specific linked DW account.]