This program was written in 2017 and probably doesn't work any more.
This is a tool, written in Perl, to convert a Zendesk Support JSON export file of tickets into individual HTML files and download all ticket attachments. The output isn't particularly attractive but is honest, containing:
- Ticket number
- Title
- Creation date and time
- Priority
- Assignee
- Status
- Tags
- Custom fields
- Requester
- Description
- Public and private comments (unformatted)
It doesn't currently produce an index of tickets or users. That may change in a future release. Patches to improve the fidelity of the ticket template, or for that matter my horrible CSS, are very welcome.
It's intended to work on complete data dumps, not incremental ones. You may have to contact Zendesk's support to request JSON as an output format.
If requested, attachments are downloaded in the following structure:
<attachments directory>/<ticket number>/<comment number>_<file name>
This tool has the following non-core prerequisites:
Once these are installed (you can use the CPAN
or CPANPLUS command line tools to do
that), in the root directory of this tool, edit zendesk.conf, which is in
INI format.
The directories section you probably won't need to change - tickets_json
will contain the JSON files for individual tickets, tickets_html the output
HTML files, attachments the downloaded attachments, indices the data
indices produced by the tool while working (currently only for attachments),
and resources has the output template file and stylesheet.
In the custom_fields section, enter the IDs and names of any custom ticket
fields
that you've set up, in the format 00000000 = Name.
Once you have confirmed that the desired directories config is in place, you'll need to create the target directories before the first run, with something like
$ mkdir tickets_json tickets_html attachments indices.
zendesk.pl [options] tickets_dump_file.json
Running the tool without options will produce HTML files for all tickets in
your JSON dump file and download all attachments, but not overwrite anything
produced in a previous run. You can override that by using the --update
flag. Future versions may provide an option to regenerate a particular ticket
(for if you're testing modifications to the ticket template), but that's not
currently available.
Options:
-c, --config Location of config file (default: ./zendesk.conf)
-d, --delay Delay between downloading attachments; default 5 seconds
-q, --quiet Don't mention individual items while running
-u, --update Overwrite any files already converted/downloaded
-ns, --no_split Don't split JSON dump file into individual ticket files
-nc, --no_convert Don't convert JSON ticket files into HTML files
-ni, --no_index Don't index ticket attachments
-nd, --no_download Don't download attachments from Zendesk
If you're using Zendesk data in Perl, you may have seen their help article
Getting large data sets with the Zendesk API and Perl. It
gives bad advice, suggesting that you suppress character set warnings with
no warnings 'utf8';. Don't do that, follow this advice.
Copyright 2017 Scott Martin.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.