I recently tried to import a few hundred weblog entries from my previous blogging attempt, into my fresh MovableType installation. But they were contained on a MySQL database, in the rows of my former blogging tool, Wordpress.
While there is an importer from the well documented MovableType format to Wordpress in the tool himself, in Movable Type, you have to provide your content formatted as a MovableType import file.
So, I build a really small (and somehow dirty) Perl script, without any dependences on other CPAN packages, that can process a MySQL dump from your Wordpress installation and create a MovableType import file.
First of all, please create a dump of your database. If you wish, do not extract anything than the "wp_posts" table, since we won't use other. Then, please use a terminal set to use the encoding from your table content (default: utf-8) and feed the import script on his standard input.
cat my-dump | perl wp2mt-import.pl > import-file
Then, the import-file will be ready. You just have to go back to your Movable Type installation and follow the import process !
The script will work fine on your favorite GNU/Linux (if perl is installed), FreeBSD, NetBSD or MacOSX installation.
Download it here : Wordpress to MovableType converter.