In a Support thread titled “Importing from Zulip?”, paulrudy asks if there’s a way to import Zulip chat history into Discourse. pfaffman responds that no official Zulip importer exists, likely because Zulip is chat-focused, but suggests modifying an existing Ruby-based importer or hiring help via his migration service. paulrudy considers trying it himself as an amateur programmer. pfaffman encourages him and notes Zulip’s chat nature might make it better for transient discussions while Discourse suits deeper, archival conversations. paulrudy questions why Discourse isn’t ideal for chat, noting that teams often use chat apps for both real-time and lasting discussions. Later, panosd revives the thread, confirming interest in migrating due to Discourse’s ActivityPub support and pointing out Zulip’s forum-like topic structure, making the transition seem logical despite its chat roots.
Hi community,
A team I’m involved with has been using Zulip for a few months now, and I’m looking into the possibility that we could use Discourse instead. I’m curious if there’s a way to work with a Zulip backup/export to import history into a Discourse instance? I wasn’t able to find anything here on the subject yet…
Paul
Welcome, @paulrudy! I don’t see an existing Zulip importer. Since Zulip is more of a chat than a forum, I guess no one has wanted to do that (or if they did, they didn’t bother to contribute their code to Discourse).
If you’re familiar with Ruby, or programming in general, you can take an existing importer and modify it to work with your Zulip database. I don’t see any importers that read a postgres database, but since it’s what Discourse uses, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
If you don’t have the time to do that, but do have a budget you can seek help in Marketplace or contact me via my migration quote form .
Thanks very much, Jay! I’m an experimenting amateur when it comes to programming. I may give it a shot myself, and then if I’m way over my head, I’ll reach out for help.
I wrote several importers before I really knew Ruby, but a long time ago I took a course in which I learned a bunch of (now mostly unused) programming languages. Good luck!
Since Zulip is really a chat program (from what I could glean in 30 seconds), it might make sense to keep it for transient discussion and have Discourse for things that need more thought and attention.
Good point. Although the way we use Zulip (and others use chat apps like Slack) seems to include both contemporaneous chat as well as archive-worthy discussion. I hesitate to ask people to have to keep track of two platforms. Any reason why Discourse is less than ideal for chat?
Reviving this since I have the same question, and I’m wondering if anyone has attempted/managed to do this in the meantime. And yes, Zulip is a chat platform, but it’s also very close to the logic of a forum, since chat messages are posted under topics. We’ve been very happy with Zulip, but we’re tempted by Discourse’s ActivityPub integration…