bulk Import PDF as site with attachments
Asked by Magnus Siebert:

Hi everyone,

is there a way to import a big bulk of Dokuments (mostly PDFs, but also some pictures and word-documents) as sites with attachments?

We have a big knwolegebase located on a network drive (about 300 Folders and 10k Files) and I want to import that into one Space in Conlfuence (5.0.3). Folder-name = site-name and all files from the particular Folder attached to the site with original Names would be great.

Is there way to do that? A Plugin? Perhaps anykind of script (API, CLI, etc.) I could use to automate that?

Any Script that handles with similar Problems, which I could customize, would help me too.

Hope someone can help me

thank you already in advance


Answers:
author: Daniel Borcherding
body: Magnus,

You may want to take a look at the WebDav integration point with Confluence.

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Configuring+a+WebDAV+client+for+Confluence>

Uploading that many attachments to Confluence is likely not the best idea. Confluence is not designed to be a fileserver. With Webdav you get the best of the both worlds. Files remain in their current location, which is hopefully some quick file server, and the files are accessible from Confluence.

comments: author: Magnus Siebert
body: Thanks for your answer, I will have a look at that.

But there is something else I think about now:

Of course I know that Conlfuence is no DMS or something like that, but are there any guidelines on how much content and especially attachments Conlfuence can handle?

What would happen If would upload that 10k files (about 15GB)? Would it crash or just slow it down?


author: Magnus Siebert
body: Hi,  
I used the WebDAV-Integration in combination with a small vb-script.

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Configuring+a+WebDAV+client+for+Confluence>

<br />

Using WebDAV for Import is pretty easy. The folder-hierachy will be adopted by the site-hierachy of Confluence. The foldername is automaticly the new sitename and all documents (pdf, doc,...) will be safed as attachments. Note that if the new content all goes to one Space there can not be 2 or more folders with the same name. Also folders and/or files with "+" or "\&" in its name can t be imported over WebDAV.  
The vb-script I mentioned was used to clean up the file- and foldernames and to get different txt-files into the imported folders. If you put an txt-file ,with wiki-markup in it, into a folder ,with the exact same Name as the txt, it will become the template for the new site.

comments: author: Gregory Levine
body: Hi Magnus -

Question looking back at this need you had (I realize its 4-5 years ago now)....

Did you also have a need to map a permissions set to the content you were bringing in to Confluence? If yes, how did you manage that?

I have thousands and thousands of PDF's I need to import AND match a global permissions set to all of the content for many different user types (If you are 'x' you can see 'y', etc.)

Thanks.

Greg


author: Oliver Schreckenbach
body: Hello Magnus,

can you tell me how you finally managed the migration? WebDAV, Remote API or something even better?

I have nearly the same task to do. We are migrating from lotus notes to confluence and i am looking for the most convenient way to import a huge load of small pdfs and attachments into confluence.

The files are sorted hierarchically in folders and this hierarchy must be kept.

No preference on wether the result is pure HTML converted from the pdfs or a Wicci template with attached original pdf file.


author: Timothy
body: If don't want to just use the drag and drop, these are some options for you.

<https://developer.atlassian.com/display/CONFDEV/Confluence+Remote+API+Reference>