Is it possible to customize space export XML file?

[Alex Yasurek]

What we are looking to do is is have multiple spaces with the same content but just in a different language. So we would have one space in english, another in japanese, etc..

What we want to do though is have the URL stay the same across all spaces, except for the Key.

For example:

company.atlassian.net/wiki/display/ENG/My-Space

company.atlassian.net/wiki/display/JPN/My-Space

company.atlassian.net/wiki/display/GER/My-Space

The problem we see happening is that confluence creates the URL from the title of the article but those titles need to be translated into the corresponding languages.

What we are planning of doing is exporting a space, sending it to be translated, and then re-import it as a separate space.

Now in the XML space export, is there a way to add some custom tag that tells confluence to use the text inside there for the URL and not the title? This way when we have it translated, we can just tell them to ignore the text in that tag while translating the title tag. So when we re-import the space, the title of the article will be in the appropriate lanaguage but the URL will still be in English because its using that custom tag to create the URL and not the title.

We are also wondering about this on the hosted version of confluence, not on-demand.

PS: the reason we would like to do it this way is because we will have hundreds of articles and many different products linking to them and it will be much easier if all we have to worry about is just changing the Key in the URL when sending someone to their language of choice.

Thanks

[JohnA · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex,

This is something which I would describe as "possible, documented but unsupported". That means you can do it, you're on exactly the right path with the method you're proposing to use and it should work as expected, although we cannot guarantee it will and Support cannot fix the XML for you so please ensure you make backups of everything before making any changes to anything!

The documentation you're looking for, which also provides the strings to search and replace in the XML, can be found here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/Copy+or+Rename+a+Space+in+Confluence

This should work as expected with both OnDemand and self-hosted instances but I cannot guarantee that it will work forever because it's an unsupported procedure so that could change. However, if you have any problems or something goes wrong and you need to get assistance from Support then please let them know you've been doing this because it might take a while to figure out the issue otherwise.

All the best,
John

[Alex Yasurek]

Well I assume no one knows if this is possible so I will close the question.

[Alex Yasurek]

We have tested exporting a space and re-importing it as a different space. That all works fine.

We just are not sure about how to go about creating a custom tag in the XML that the system will use to create the URLs for the articles instead of the titles. I realize this may have to be done manually by editing the XML after exporting a space and adding these tags, but the main problem is how to tell the system to use that new tag for the URL and not the title.

Do you happen to know how we would go about this? Is this something we would have to go into the core files of the hosted version of confluence to change?

[Alex Yasurek]

So does anyone know if it would be possible to add an extra tag in the space export XML and have confluence create the URL from that tag instead of the title of the article?