Upgrading Plone 5.1 to 5.2#

This chapter provides instructions and tips for upgrading to Plone 5.2.

General information#

  • Before you upgrade read Introduction and Preparations.

  • Always upgrade from the latest version of 5.1.x to the latest version of 5.2.x. This will resolve many migration-specific issues.

  • If you have problems, ask for help in the Plone Community Forum.

Upgrading#

This upgrade is unique because Plone 5.2 supports both Python 2 and Python 3. The upgrade to 5.2 needs to be done in Python 2.7, and is not different from previous migrations. To run the upgrade to 5.2, follow the links at the top of the control panel or visit the ZMI for your site at /@@plone-upgrade.

If you also want to upgrade from Python 2 to 3 with an existing database, you need to run an additional database migration while the site is not running. See the section Python 3 support below for details.

Changes between Plone 5.1 and 5.2#

The following PLIPs (Plone Improvement Proposals) have been implemented for 5.2.

Python 3 support#

Plone 5.2 supports Python 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8, as well as Python 2.7.

This is PLIP 2368 and PLIP 2890.

For end users#

Nothing changes.

For developers#

All custom code and add-ons need to support Python 3. Existing databases need to be upgraded as well.

The migration to Python 3 follows these steps:

  1. Upgrade add-ons and code to Plone 5.2 while running Python 2.7.

  2. Upgrade the Database to Plone 5.2 while running Python 2.7. To run that upgrade, follow the links at the top of the control panel or visit the ZMI for your site at /@@plone-upgrade.

  3. Drop any remaining Archetypes dependencies. Migrate these to Dexterity instead.

  4. Port add-ons and custom code to Python 3 without the existing database.

  5. Migrate the database using zodbupdate. If you are working on a new project without an existing database, you can skip this step.

See Migrating Plone 5.2 to Python 3 for details about porting code and a database to Python 3.

Zope 4.0#

Plone runs on top of Zope 4.0 instead of Zope 2.13.x.

This is PLIP 1351.

For end users#

This has no changes for Editors. Admins will notice that the ZMI has a new Twitter Bootstrap-based theme, and some control panels have moved.

For developers#

There are a lot of changes in Zope. For details please see the following documents.

Many of the changes in Zope had effects on Plone that have been addressed. For most add-ons, though, the changes have little to no effect.

Some tools from CMFCore are now utilities and can also be accessed as such. Example:

# old
from Products.CMFCore.utils import getToolByName
wf_tool = getToolByName(self.context, 'portal_workflow')

# new
from Products.CMFCore.interfaces import IWorkflowTool
from zope.component import getUtility
wf_tool = getUtility(IWorkflowTool)

The deprecated module Globals was removed. Example:

# old:
import Globals
develoment_mode = Globals.DevelopmentMode

# new
from App.config import getConfiguration
develoment_mode = getConfiguration().debug_mode

Functional tests using the zope.testbrowser now use WebTest instead of mechanize. That means that tests that used internal methods of mechanize need to be updated.

WSGI#

This is a result of the PLIP for Python 3. Plone 5.2 by default uses the WSGI-Server waitress.

For end users#

Nothing changes.

For developers#

By default, Plone uses waitress instead of ZServer as an HTTP server because ZServer will not be ported to Python 3. Only when running on Python 2, you can still use ZServer by setting wsgi = off in the buildout part that configures the instance with plone.recipe.zope2instance.

Some options that used to configure ZServer are no longer available in plone.recipe.zope2instance when running on WSGI. Check https://pypi.org/project/plone.recipe.zope2instance for details.

plone.restapi#

This is PLIP 2177.

For end users#

Nothing changes.

For developers#

You can now use a RESTful hypermedia API for Plone to build modern JavaScript frontends on top of Plone. Also, the REST API can be used to import or export data.

See https://plonerestapi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ for details.

New navigation with dropdown#

This is PLIP 2516.

For end users#

Site Administrators can use the navigation control panel (/@@navigation-controlpanel) to configure the dropdown navigation.

For developers#

For upgraded sites, the dropdown navigation is disabled by default. For new sites, it is set to display 3 levels.

The code for the global navigation has moved to plone.app.layout.navigation.navtree.NavTreeProvider, and the template plone.app.layout/plone/app/layout/viewlets/sections.pt has changed. Overrides of the previous navigation may no longer work and may need to be updated.

Developers who used add-ons or custom code for a dropdown navigation should consider migrating to the new navigation since it is extremely fast, accessible, and implemented almost entirely with CSS and HTML.

Merge Products.RedirectionTool into core#

This is PLIP 1486.

For end users#

Site Administrators can use the URL Management control panel (/@@redirection-controlpanel) to manage and add alternative URLs, including bulk upload of alternative URLs.

As an Editor, you can see the URL Management link in the actions menu of a content item, and add or remove alternative URLs for this specific content item.

For developers#

Since the add-on Products.RedirectionTool has been merged into Plone core, you should remove it. You can either uninstall it before upgrading to Plone 5.2, or remove the product from the eggs and let the upgrade code from Plone remove it. Any alternative URLs (aliases) that you have added manually will be kept.

New Login#

This is PLIP 2092.

For end users#

Nothing changes.

For developers#

Overrides of any templates or Python scripts that dealt with login or logout need to be changed.

The login has moved from a skin-based system to browser views. You can use z3c.jbot to override templates, and use the component architecture to override the views. The main code is now in Products.CMFPlone.browser.login.login.LoginForm.

You can customize the location to which a user will be redirected after login with an adapter. Here is an example:

from plone import api
from Products.CMFPlone.interfaces import IRedirectAfterLogin
from Products.CMFPlone.utils import safe_unicode
from zope.interface import implementer


@implementer(IRedirectAfterLogin)
class RedirectAfterLoginAdapter(object):

    def __init__(self, context, request):
        self.context = context
        self.request = request

    def __call__(self, came_from=None, is_initial_login=False):
        if 'Reviewer' in api.user.get_roles():
            api.portal.show_message(u'Get to work!', self.request)
            came_from = self.context.portal_url() + '/@@full_review_list'
        else:
            user = api.user.get_current()
            fullname = safe_unicode(user.getProperty('fullname'))
            api.portal.show_message(u'Nice to see you again, {0}!'.format(fullname), self.request)
        if not came_from:
            came_from = self.context.portal_url()
        return came_from

Then register the adapter through ZCML:

<adapter
    factory="your.addon.adapters.RedirectAfterLoginAdapter"
    for="OFS.interfaces.ITraversable
         zope.publisher.interfaces.IRequest"
/>

This adapter adapts context and request, thus you can modify these according to your needs. You can also write similar adapters for IInitialLogin and IForcePasswordChange.

Deprecate Archetypes#

This is PLIP 2390.

For end users#

Nothing changes.

For developers#

In Plone 5.2 Archetypes is only available if you run Python 2.7 and if you add it to your dependencies.

You can add it by either adding Products.ATContentTypes to the list of your add-ons or by using the "extra" archetypes with the egg Plone in your buildout:

[instance]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
eggs =
    Plone[archetypes]
    your.addon

Note

Instead of using Archetypes in Plone 5.2, you should consider migrating to Dexterity. Dexterity is also a hard requirement to be able to use Python 3. See plone.app.contenttypes documentation on Migration for details on the migration from Archetypes to Dexterity.

Remove support for old style resource registries#

This is PLIP 1742.

For end users#

Nothing changes.

For developers#

Support for old-style resource registries (cssregistry.xml and jsregistry.xml) was removed completely, along with the tools portal_css or portal_javascript.

You need to add resources using the new Resource Registry. See https://5.docs.plone.org/adapt-and-extend/theming/resourceregistry.html#resources for detailed instructions.

Restructure CMFPlone static resources#

This is PLIP 1653.

For end users#

Nothing changes.

For developers#

All JavaScript related code is now located in plone.staticresources.