Upgrade XML space export of 3.x Confluence space to 4.x instance - how?

[Patrick Wilson]

We have some content that resides in a 3.x instance of Confluence. We would like to take space exports from 3.x and import the content into our 4.x instance.

How do we up-migrate content from an older (wiki markup) instance to the current storage format at the space level?

[Daniel Wester]

You'll probably want to spin up a second 3.x instance as(using the "Developer" license key) and import the space export into it. Then upgrade that instance to the 4.x version and then export from there into the 4.x instance.

The storage method changed dramatically between Confluence 3 and 4 so I don't think that you can edit the entity XML file. I believe that you might be able to import wiki markup by using the https://bobswift.atlassian.net/wiki/display/CCLI/CLI+Plugin+for+Confluence - but I suspect that you'll have a lot of extra overhead with that approach.

[Patrick Wilson]

Thanks for that idea. It would work if this was a one-time deal, but we do have the need to do this every so often - 4-7 times a year, maybe. I'm not sure how practical it is for us to maintain a separate instance for the purpose of upgrading the occasional space.

I have been working with the CLI plugin, particularly the convertToStorageFormat parameter, but am having trouble getting from the page level to the space level. Was hoping to write up some CLI commands, potentially, to do this for us.

https://bobswift.atlassian.net/wiki/display/CSOAP/Documentation#Documentation-convertToStorageFormat

[Felipevsw]

Quoting the documentation:
"Confluence prevents the import of space backups which aren't from the same major version. The reason for this is that any schema change between the export and imported version of Confluence will cause the import to fail, leaving you with an incomplete import. Even worse, the failure can be database-dependent, so it may work fine on one particular database but your backup will fail to import later."

So, prior to export the data, both instances must be on the same version. You must upgrade the 3.x Confluence to the version 3.5.17 first, then upgrade it to the same version 4.x that the other instance has. More infor can be found here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONF40/Upgrading+Confluence

[Patrick Wilson]

Thanks for that information, but in this case, we want to keep the two instances on different versions for some time. However, we occasionally have the need to get one space from the 3.x instance to 4.x.

Is there any other path? Maybe using CLI? Or editing the entity XML file?