I have been tasked with upgrading a legacy system from Cakephp2.6.2 to Cakephp3.8. Obviously the 2 are drastically different but is there a simple way of getting the old project to work with the new cake version? Or could anyone steer me in the right direction for the best way to do this?
There is no generic "best way" that fits all. The best way is the easiest way for your specific application that results in a properly working application, but that's something that you need to determine for yourself.
There's an upgrade tool that can automate some of the repetitive stuff, like changing directory structures, renaming classes, adding namespaces, etc, but in 99.999999% of all cases the result will not be a working application, you'll still have lots of manual migration to do. How much that is, and how complicated it might be, totally depends on your application, it might be rather simple, but it can also be so complicated that rewriting from scratch might be the better choice.
IMHO you should first make yourself familiar with CakePHP 3.x, to the point where you are able to confidently create robust applications. Lots of questions that you may have about upgrading will solve themselves once you are familiar with CakePHP 3.x.
You should not directly upgrade from Cakephp 2.x.x to Cakeph 3.x.x, here are reasons,
Code base and directory structure is entirely different and it will not work properly.
If you have not good grip on both version trails then you will find yourself in trouble.
Best way in your case, you should upgrade to some higher version of cakephp 2.x not jump to cakephp 3.x. If you want to switch to cakephp 3.x you should rebuild app from scratch.
Related
So I'm about to start a big Property Management System for the cloud. This Hotel system already exists in VB.net technologies, and now we are porting the whole system to web.
We are trying to decide between ASP.net or PHP, we are thinking on PHP because ASP.net would cost too much on licensing and servers. So there is Laravel, Symphony, CodeIgniter, Zend, etc..
The thing is, this project is suppose to live for years to come. But we feel like getting constraint ed by using a PHP framework, because every time the framework gets updated then we need to update our whole system. For example.. now Laravel got updated from version 4 to 5. And the whole folder structure changed. I can't imagine having our big system needing to be updated and keep up to every Laravel version update. How do you keep up with this ?
Also, what would happened if Laravel disappears, its the trendy fashion now. But we see PHP frameworks come and go.
Would it be wiser not to use any php framework and building everything from scratch to have more control over it ?
You should first note that using a framework is primarily meant to solve two issues;
Force coding into a certain 'format'. Collaboratively working on code can generate 'hacked' solutions, or unmaintainable code. A framework can be the force which helps keep these things in check.
A framework comes with a certain core-code which handles for example database abstraction, routing, etc. which can save you a lot of time to develop yourself.
An extra thing to mention; when implementing new features, there is the possibility someone has built it before and maybe even better than you would have anticipated.
Keeping up with the framework should not be too hard, as long as you abide by the coding guidelines of the framework. With the bigger frameworks, new releases have (or after sometime generate) tutorials on how to port your previous version into the new version format.
Choosing which framework to use, is a question which is opinion-based and not suited to discuss here, but keep in mind that you choose your framework according to your needs. Also check how big the community is and how much 3rd party plugins/code exists (the more, the longer the framework will last).
Good luck!
You could see a framework as a base to start from. Remember that you get all the code! Look at the code. Do you like it? Does it fit your requirements? Using a framework gives you a huge advantage over making everything yourself from scratch.
But do you need to update? Would you update your own code constantly? Perhaps it's not always needed. Sure, if there is a security issue you should do something about it, but seeing every update to a framework as essential is just plain nonsense.
I build projects aimed at specific versions of frameworks and libraries. I try to build in flexibility so I can swap out frameworks and libraries, and versions, but I often find that I stick with what's working.
Some people might not like this, and argue you should always be on the latest version, but I find that completely impractical.
I've got a huge site that has been written (in a very bad way) in symfony 1.4
now, I've been asked to make some substantial changes to the navigation flow, add some features and so on..
considering the effort, I was wondering if it would be better to take the radical decision to port the entire website to symfony 2.0, but I'm not sure how hard that it could be.
Has anybody ever done this before?
Do you have any suggestion to make for patterns to follow, or tutorials or doc or whatever?
You may wrap your legacy project in a brand new sf2 project, by using this bundle. This way, you'll be able to migrate your project one piece at a time, and new functionalities may be developed with sf2 as soon as you get the wrapper to work.
You may be interested by this post about migrating
Here's how I would go about it:
You need to learn and study some things first:
HTTP fundamentals
PHP namespaces, which are heavily used
Symfony2 documentation
Symfony2 documentation
Symfony2 documentation
PHPUnit documentation
Then when you get the hang of Symfony2, you need to find out what to reuse from your old project:
Models, business logic?
Did you use Doctrine in symfony? If yes, look at how to port your entities to Doctrine2, and learn about the differences. If you used Propel, I would look at switching to Doctrine2 and not use the PropelBundle, atleast until you get used to Symfony2. You can find better documentation and sample code out there for Doctrine2.
You also need to convert your old helpers classes to Symfony2 services.
Views?
Symfony2 uses Twig as templating engine, but you could go with pure PHP.
Controllers?
This should feel somewhat similar to symfony. The flow of Symfony2 matches the HTTP flow, meaning you get a Request object and must reurn a Response object.
It really depends on how well structured our old project is. Symfony2 is an entirely different beast than 1.0-1.4. I would probably not call it a port, but a rewrite - however, if your old project is well structured you could probably reuse quite a bit.
Without actually seeing your code, it's impossible to give a good answer on how hard it would be. It's very much doable, but there is no easy route. Symfony2 is, IMHO, the way of the future for PHP projects and in the end you will get a project that is much easier to maintain and support.
I am looking for a "lite" php framework like codeigniter that doesn't generate anything or make me follow conventions, etc. I have a lot of legacy databases to connect to and I don't know whether or not CI will be able to connect to them all so I thought I'd see if anything else is out there.
Again, not after anything that worries me to death about singular and plural names, makes me have a database in a certain fashion, or anything that gets in my way. No offense by that. I have other projects where that is just fine and I use RoR for that. I just don't want that here because if a framework is built around that like RoR is they tend to be difficult to use with existing legacy databases.
Thank you.
CakePHP is the most popular.
There's a fork of CodeIgniter called Kohana.
The connectivity to the legacy database shouldn't be an issue of the framework though, I guess it's more a PHP issue if the connection won't work.
http://alternativeto.net/software/codeigniter/ Will give you a few alternatives.
Check out Laravel. http://laravel.com/
It is really clean and well documented and has some really useful features which I didn't find in CodeIgniter or CakePHP which I previously worked on. I tried it out for one of my recent projects and I was really impressed !
The Zend Framework might be your best bet:
Zend Framework is an open source,
object oriented web application
framework for PHP 5. Zend Framework is
often called a 'component library',
because it has many loosely coupled
components that you can use more or
less independently.
Since you can use the components independently, you will have more flexibility in choosing your models and data access. Be warned though, there is a steep learning curve.
apparently Qcodo is supposed to be a lot like rails according to http://gadgetopia.com/post/4726
other than that (and symfony, Yii, and CakePHP) if you're comfortable with CI, do go for Kohana, as Cassey mentioned
You could also just use PEAR or some wrappers. if you have legacy databases I wonder if you might have older php/mysql tht it sits on, in which case a lot of the newer frameworks that are updated for the latest/greatest might not work for you anyway.
I'd look at Kohana or Yii. Sure, Yii has scaffolding, but you don't HAVE to use that if you don't want to. Just as with Ruby on Rails.
Both are MVC frameworks that are very object oriented. How you connect to databases is totally up to you.
You can use the ORM in Kohana without following their naming conventions, you just have to let the Models know the name of your tables and primary keys (otherwise you have to follow the convention, of course).
Check out Symfony
The last version is very lite and all extra packages are optional and the core is so lite and also it is so clean and well documented .
i want to convert zend php to cake php but not finding correct book and guiding to do that????
Just download Cake, install and configure it and then gradually migrate your existing code into it. There is no standard recipe how to do that. You have to do that manually, class by class, line by line. Cake's API is quite different from ZF's API so this will take a while, depending on how much coupling you got. Also, ZF does not have any ActiveRecord, while Cake is built around that, so the database part will probably take longest.
Migrating from framework to framework is a sure thing to introduce bugs into the code. If you don't have a solid unit-test base already, it's a good opportunity to add a test before migrating a class.
On a sidenote: why do you want to to do that anyway? Cake is compatible with PHP4 and has a rather messy and slow performing codebase. Migrating your application from ZF to Cake is likely a downgrade. And as others pointed out, you could have Cake and ZF coexist.
I suggest you learn how to use both frameworks and then port the code manually. There are no tools that will do this for you; there simply is no way to do this automatically, especially given then highly flexible nature of ZF.
Learn both, use your understanding to migrate the code.
I am deciding on a framework to try out for PHP. I have narrowed it down to CakePHP and CodeIgniter. I have a couple of questions for any of you who have used or are familiar with both:
I like the fact that CakePHP keeps most of the code outside of the webroot by default. Especially since I may end up using a single framework install for multiple apps. I see CodeIgniter will do that too, but you have to configure it and move some stuff around. Is that workaround secure and reliable, or is it an afterthought hack?
Which (if not both) is easier to upgrade, and maintain over the long term? As new versions of the framework (and PHP itself) come out. I don't want to find my stuff either breaking, or becoming outdated.
Edit:
This is a very old post, but I thought I would update it with what I finally ended up doing, which was to use Kohana.
You should try both frameworks for a week or so, building something trivial (like a blog or wiki) in both, and see which you prefer using. Whatever makes the most sense to you will probably sustain you the longest through upgrades an deprecations.
CakePHP is in a bit of a volatile state right now, still unearthing bugs while pushing to release version 1.2 (which is not backward compatible). I wouldn't suggest building a critical application with it if you need something rock solid right now. If you can wait a month or two for things to settle, then it's probably a moot point.
To address your concerns:
1) Cake and CI do it the same way (iirc). They are equally secure, reliable, and hackish on this front.
2) Everything changes. If you need concrete, perpetual assurance of stability and backward compatibility, roll your own framework. There's not that much to it, and you're guaranteed that nothing changes unless you want it to.
I have deployed multiple applications on CakePHP and it's been a very, very, nice experience. You can't go wrong either way, as both are solid.
is a non-issue.
CodeIgniter has a sponsor behind it, so it's definately the one to choose for the long term. Also, it's faster.
This is a non issue. The app has a couple of lines which says where the core and your application code lies. You just need to change those lines.
You can never anticipate this one.
The state of PHP is a wildcard here. One app (CI) is built to be compatible with PHP4 the other requires PHP5. If you need to deal with the possibilty of a web host only supporting older versions of PHP then you need to go with CO.
Another issue is unit testing. If you require your framework to ship with tests, then CI is not the way to go.
Personally, I feel comfortable with CI because of the corporate backing. The company behind CI is making real profit from their efforts. Though CI is free, their paid product (ExpressionEngine) will eventually live on CI. The same could be said of the Zend Framework and even the birth of Rails (originally built for Basecamp.)
A minor correction to an above comment: both are compatible with PHP4, not just CI. Also, I don't think that having a sponsor makes CI and more or less upgradable or maintainable. Money doesn't solve those problems in the least.
I use CakePHP for a variety of applications and I've been happy with it thus far. 1.2 is a huge improvement over 1.1, and while the library source may change from RC3 to Final, I don't think any code you write will become obsolete. My only niggle is that the Manual isn't as comprehensive as it should be (in my opinion), and I end up in the API quite a bit. The trade-off there is that I now understand the code behind the scenes very well. In any case, I highly recommend it.
On the other hand, I've never played around with CI, so I can't recommend CakePHP over CI. I would take each for a spin and see which one grabs you. Whichever one you choose, study the hell out of its conventions and capabilities. When I started with Cake, I unwittingly wrote a bunch of code to do something Cake did "automagically" by having me set one variable in the controller.
CodeIgniter is very flexible as you would see once you try it. So how your application would be maintainable would fall you your hands.
I have also deployed multiple applications using the same installation. I usually create 2 applications for CMS projects (one for admin, one for the front-end).
To address both of your questions from a CodeIgniter perspective (I don't use Cake):
1) CodeIgniter doesn't keep itself outside the webroot by default, but it can do so with some very simple changes. The first part of my CI tutorial series explains how to do so, along with a walk through of the setup of a new CI instance. Once finished the only part of CI that needs to be in the webroot is a small index.php bootstrap file.
2) I've got an application which I originally developed in CI 1.4.x and I've sucessfully migrated to 1.5.x then 1.6.x. With each new release the CI dev's make available detailed upgrade instructions laying out what needs to be replaced so upgrades are fairly easy.
Jim.