Solved Import from file?

Is there a way to import posts from a file, such as CSV, XML, or even RSS (xml)?
This would be quite helpful for folks who have used one of the forum products that is not yet specifically supported by the Kunena Importer (such as squarespace or Wild Appricot)
Thanks,
Ari

Yes, it would be possible to import data via CSV and convert the data to MySQL.

Where do I find instructions detailing how to accomplish this? I do not see them in the forum here, the wiki, or on github.
I also do not see where to download the latest component (I can only find com_kunenaimporter-1.7.1.zip on github) or how to use it.
Where do I go to find the instructions?

Thank you again,
Ari

There are no "instructions" that I am aware of. There is some information available (if you search the forum) about the Kunena database structure but there is no general rule.

You asked if it was possible to import data (from a file or files, e.g. CSV) and I have answered that general question. If you have a specific case of a forum that you have saved in a CSV format then it is possible; however, the extent to which your Kunena forum would mirror everything that you had might be limited.

If you have a forum (and you want to migrate it to Kunena) then you could do this yourself—if you have the know-how—or you could give the job to a professional to do the work for you.

OK, so figured it out on my own. I was unable to find information in the forums about how to do it, or even any information about mapping database fields to import to.
So, basically, I did this:
Go into my hosting CPanel, then to phpMyAdmin for the database, and browse through the database tables related to kunena. Since my previous forum was very simple, and only had text replies without images, polls, or other attachments, I simply had to export the following tables to CSV:
kunena_messages
kunena_messages_text
kunena_topics
kunena_user_categories
kunena_user_topics

I entered some test threads into the forums and then looked at the structure in the tables above to see how the structure worked, exported them to CSV from phpMyAdmin so I'd have a guide to entering the new data, then deleted the test messages from the forum. Then I just imported my old forum messages into the csv files using some regular expressions and deleted the test message csv rows. I then saved the files as csv in Libre Office, choosing "edit filter settings" in the save-as dialog to ensure they were encoded in UTF-8 and all fields were quoted.
Then I imported the CSV files into the appropriate tables in phpMyAdmin.
I went into the kunena_categories table to update the category posts counts, and was done.
One hint, for the time values, they are unix time, so you can use the following excel formula to convert a standard date (put standard date in an adjacent column, delete this column prior to import) to the unix date format:
It worked.
I'm running Joomla 3.3.3 and Kunena 3.06
Hope this helps somebody.
Ari

Would you be able to elaborate on your explanation?

Specifically, I don't see how you transplanted the users... I have an old forum in a complicated form (the "messages" table has 63 fields!?), I can read messages and posters and UNIXepoch timestamps, but I don't see how to transplant the users to Joomla?

+++update:++++++
The old forum uses the MD5 hash of the concatenation of username and password (so user 'admin' with password 'sesame' gets hashed to 'd721e07bcbe666fc7585395de151635e'. I see in the password table of the Joomla site that all hashes have '$2y$10$' as the first 7 characters, then follows a mixture of lowercase and uppercase alphanumeric characters plus dots and slashes, and there's many more of them than in the MD5.
So: can I (how? temporarily? and later force password reset?) use the unsalted MD5 for passwords?
+++/update+++++++

I have the users' hashed passwords, their names, their emails. I want to safely import them on a testsite, so not reset their passwords.

Can you attach sample regular expressions you used?

I'm a webdesigner who's been sucked in too deep, and has now been ordered to do stuff far beyond his comfort zone... I can do basic stuff with phpmyadmin (like change users/passwords/tableprefixes, to move Joomla around between servers with Akeeba backup+kickstart.php), I can learn by example, etc.

So am I right in assuming both Joomla and the old forum (from 2008, never updated, a bit of a serious risk) use MD5 to hash, so I can just copy the hashed things? What utility/extension/technique would you use? Or anyone else who's reading this?

I won't abandon my client (though I could kind of afford to), so I have to get this solved.