I’m trying to import from a Vanilla forum using the instructions posted here . However, I get the following error when I run the vanilla.rb import script: Loading existing groups... Loading existing users... Loading existing categories... Loading existing posts... Loading existing topics... parsing …

Oh. It’s aweful. You best bet, based on a vague recollection of a single time I did this over a year ago, is to play around with as many different conversions as you can until you can finally hit on one that works for all or most data. I think that I did a bunch of one-by-one transformations that en…

That code is used within the import script or on the server/database side?

In the import script. I don’t like to mess with the database. Somewhere you call this function on raw to fix raw (and maybe titles?).

Ok, thanks very much! This should give me a huge head-start in debugging this.

We got this to work by adding a simple command to encode the file as UTF-8 while reading it, using something like encode"UTF-8" on lines 76-80 of the vanilla.rb import script. I’m just waiting for confirmation on the exact syntax from the guy who did it via command line. I will update this when it …

Here is what he used to fix this, starting on line 76 of vanilla.rb def read_file puts "reading file..." string = [File.read](http://file.read/)(@vanilla_file) .force_encoding('UTF-8').encode("UTF-8").gsub("\\N", "") .force_encoding('UTF-8').encode("UTF-8").gsub(/\\$\n/m, "\\n") .fo…

This doesn’t work. Same error.

You need to Google about encoding and figure out your to fix your broken encoding.

Hi @ddeveloper , I worked through this process just a couple of months ago (and I am not a developer :slightly_smiling_face:) and managed to successfully migrate a self-hosted Vanilla forum to self-hosted Discourse. One thing that was key for me, was making sure when doing the data export with Vanil…

I’ve followed the same guide except using the porter version 2.6. I will the export file from version 2.6 and update here.

Error importing from vanilla: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8

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Error importing from vanilla: invalid byte sequence in UTF-8

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