# Vanilla Migration Issue
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [2016年十月17日 07:47 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632 "2016-10-17T07:47:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mmuyskens](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mmuyskens)
#### Post date: [2016年十月17日 07:47 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/1 "2016-10-17T07:47:09Z")
Not sure if this is the correct tag - however;
vanilla.rb errors out at line 240 if null date fields. Suggest if statement to replace null with 0000-00-00 00:00:00
Thanks,
Mark
---
### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [2016年十月17日 07:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/2 "2016-10-17T07:54:53Z")
It depends. Sometimes it makes sense to have a null date. Do you know what the date is for?
---
### Author:  [@mmuyskens](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mmuyskens)
#### Post date: [2016年十月17日 08:41 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/3 "2016-10-17T08:41:00Z")
I’m not 100%, but It was in the Vanilla User table (I believe it was the DateInserted field). I updated each field that was a datetime type to work around the issue. There’s a total of 7 fields with this type in the Vanilla User DB;
[ ](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ama4xijykv6epby/Screenshot%202016-10-17%2004.45.26.png?dl=0)
---
### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [2016年十月17日 08:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/4 "2016-10-17T08:49:57Z")
If it was the `DateInserted`, then it was definitely required. I’d rather it blow up (or skip it) rather than importing bad data.
---
### Author:  [@mmuyskens](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mmuyskens)
#### Post date: [2016年十月17日 09:09 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/5 "2016-10-17T09:09:12Z")
Hmm, maybe inserting the current timestamp in this case would be a better idea - anyways, just throwing this out as an issue really. Having the script stop and not import ANY users doesn’t really work 🙂
---
### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [2016年十月17日 09:26 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/6 "2016-10-17T09:26:09Z")
Feel free to submit a PR 😉
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [2016年十月17日 18:36 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/7 "2016-10-17T18:36:07Z")
If the problem is importing users, you might try using the DateFirstVisit field.
Maybe something like this:
```
created_at: parse_date(user[:date_inserted] || user[:date_first_visit]),
```
would work if for those users that don’t have an insert date they do have a first visit date.
Note: I’ve worked mostly with MySQL imports and don’t really understand what gets built in `parse_file`. This could be completely wrong and I have no way to test it.
---
### Author:  [@mmuyskens](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mmuyskens)
#### Post date: [2017年二月21日 23:16 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/vanilla-migration-issue/51632/8 "2017-02-21T23:16:18Z")
I know i’m bumping my own thread but round 2 for me. Different database. Any input? We have no null date fields;
```
discourse@dev-app:/var/www/discourse$ RAILS_ENV=production ruby script/import_scripts/vanilla.rb /shared/export.txt
loading existing groups...
loading existing users...
loading existing categories...
loading existing posts...
loading existing topics...
parsing file...
reading file...
parsing categories...
parsing comments...
parsing conversations...
parsing conversation_messages...
parsing discussions...
parsing permissions...
parsing roles...
parsing users...
parsing user_conversations...
parsing user_discussions...
parsing user_roles...
importing users...
script/import_scripts/vanilla.rb:240:in `strptime': no implicit conversion of nil into String (TypeError)
from script/import_scripts/vanilla.rb:240:in `parse_date'
from script/import_scripts/vanilla.rb:101:in `block in import_users'
from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:242:in `block in create_users'
from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:241:in `each'
from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:241:in `create_users'
from script/import_scripts/vanilla.rb:87:in `import_users'
from script/import_scripts/vanilla.rb:19:in `execute'
from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:45:in `perform'
from script/import_scripts/vanilla.rb:254:in `'
discourse@dev-app:/var/www/discourse$
```