From Topic Maps to MediaWiki – Quick and Dirty

Recently, I needed to make some fairly large bodies of XML available for editing by a group of people. In this case the data was stored in the Topic Maps format (XTM), and –as long as I was the only one editing the files– this had been working just fine.

But with more people about to join in, it was clear that editing the files in a simple text editor wasn’t such a good idea. So, to avoid the risk of ending up with different versions (and people endlessly complaining about editing XML), I decided to turn the whole thing into a wiki.

Now, MediaWiki has the Special:Export tool for migrating wikis (‘transwikiing’). It exports pages  in a simple XML format, so that you can import it to another wiki. This way you’re able to create a wiki simply by emulating the MediaWiki XML export format.

How to

If you want to try it, the MediaWiki output has to look a little something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mediawiki xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns="http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3/"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3/
  http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3.xsd"
  version="0.3" xml:lang="da">
<page>
 <title>Google</title>
 <id>1</id>
 <revision>
  <id>1</id>
  <timestamp/>
  <contributor>
   <username>yourUserName</username>
   <id>1</id>
   </contributor>
   <text xml:space="preserve">
   <!-- Wikitext goes here -->
   ==Link==
   [http://www.google.com]

   </text>
  </revision>
</page>
<page>
 <title>Microsoft</title>
 <id>2</id>
 ...
</page>
</mediawiki>

If your data is XTM, your starting point might be something like this made-up Topic Map with names and links of three companies:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE topicMap SYSTEM "xtm1.dtd">
<topicMap id="companies-tm.xtm"
  xmlns="http://www.topicmaps.org/xtm/1.0/"
  xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
 <topic id="001">
  <baseName>
   <baseNameString>Google</baseNameString>
  </baseName>
  <occurrence>
   <resourceRef xlink:href="http://www.google.com"/>
  </occurrence>
 </topic>
 <topic id="002">
  <baseName>
   <baseNameString>Microsoft</baseNameString>
  </baseName>
  <occurrence>
   <resourceRef xlink:href="http://www.microsoft.com"/>
  </occurrence>
 </topic>
 <topic id="003">
  <baseName>
   <baseNameString>Oracle<baseNameString>
  </baseName>
  <occurrence>
   <resourceRef xlink:href="http://www.oracle.com"/>
  </occurrence>
</topic>
</topicMap>

In this case the following XSLT stylesheet will do the job:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
   xmlns:tm="http://www.topicmaps.org xtm/1.0/"
   xmlns:tmlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
   exclude-result-prefixes="tm tmlink" version="2.0">
 <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes"/>
 <xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:apply-templates select="tm:topicMap"/>
 </xsl:template>
 <xsl:template match="tm:topicMap">
  <mediawiki xmlns="http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3/"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3/
  http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.3.xsd" version="0.3" xml:lang="da">
   <xsl:apply-templates select="tm:topic"/>
 </mediawiki>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="tm:topic">
<page>
 <title>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="tm:baseName/tm:baseNameString"/>
 </title>
 <id><!--To give each page a unique number, use the xsl:number instruction--><xsl:number/></id>
 <revision>
  <id>1</id>
  <timestamp/>
  <contributor>
   <username>yourUserName</username>
   <id>2</id>
  </contributor>
  <!--Since whitespace is crucial to the layout of your wikipage,
you should add the xml:space attribute and set the value to 'preserve'-->
  <text xml:space="preserve">
  <!--Now start building your wikipage -->

==Links==
<xsl:value-of select="tm:occurrence"/>

</text>
</revision>
</page>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Therefore:

• Make sure that your wiki is installed, AND that you have admin rights
• Create a stylesheet, somewhat like the one provided above
• Run the stylesheet on your XML file, for instance from your command line with saxon:

  $ saxon topics.xtm topicMaps2Mediawiki.xsl > mediawikiTopics.xml

• Go to the Special:Import page on your wiki
• Browse for the file, and
• Upload! Do remember, however, that the filesize maximum defaults to around 1.4 MB. To change it, you need to go to php.ini and simply change the parameters for maxuploadsize=.

After uploading the file, you’ll receive a list of links to the pages, you just made.