This is a small guide on how to migrate a project from Laravel 4 to Laravel 5. This new version has very significant changes and its migration can be somewhat tedious. With these steps that I have compiled, you may save yourself more than one headache.
Steps
Update composer in case you don’t have it updated
composer self-update
Follow the migration instructions in the Laravel documentation
http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/upgrade
When you have followed the steps you will realize that this is only the beginning of the problems, but don’t worry, I have put some points that will clarify your doubts:
The NAMESPACES
New functionality is PHP namespaces in Laravel. This will generate conflicts with public classes that you can call or classes that can be implements of base classes in PHP. To do this you should see the examples of WelcomeController.php and User.php to serve as a guide on how to call the namespaces in your php files.
The database configuration
The database connection data is now in a file called .env at the root of the entire project, it will not be necessary to modify the config/database.php file. MySQL is by default.
The classes
For example, if I create a function in controllers that is implements Iterator, in the first lines I must place
uses Iterator
If you don’t do it, it will look for the Iterator class within Laravel (specifically in Controllers) and give an error.
Problem with Eloquent
I have not been able to get the eloquent model calls from Laravel 4 to Laravel 5 to work
So I replaced it with the call DB:: (query Builder)
more info http://laravel.com/docs/5.0/queries
PSR-4
New way to distribute folders in Laravel
Important locations
Routes.php
Laravel4= app/
Laravel5= app/Http/
Controllers folder
Laravel4 = app/controlers
Laravel5 =app/Http/controlers
Views folder
Laravel4= app/views
Laravel5= resources/views
Models folder
Laravel4= app/Models
Laravel 5: no longer exists. The example model user.php is in the root of app.
This doesn’t seem right to me. In the Update documentation they say to take the liberty of creating a Models folder in the app and I have done that and moved Users.php to the Models folder
app/Models
But I have changed the user namespaces
before: namespace App;
now: namespace AppModels;
The Model classes no longer depend on eloquent but on Models
laravel 4: class nombre_de_clase extends Eloquent
laravel 5: class nombre_de_clase extends Model
Blade and Illuminate
Some illuminate functions are no longer included by default in Laravel5. To add some past functions of Illuminate you have to do the following
in config/app.php
in ‘aliases’ add these lines
in ‘providers’ add these lines in the last illuminate
'IlluminateHtmlHtmlServiceProvider',
in composer.json add the following in “require”
then in the console write:
[apache]composer update[/apache]
and then
composer dump-autoload
Then go to Blade templates:
replace the {{HTML:: … }} with
{!!HTML:: … !!}
and
{{Form:: … }} to {!!Form:: .. !!}
I hope it helps! Don’t forget to share!!!
