Upgrade Guide

This will guide you through upgrading from Backpack 3.3 to 3.4. For upgrading from 3.2 to 3.3 check out the previous upgrade guide.

Requirements

• PHP 7+
• Laravel 5.5+
• 10-30 minutes

Breaking Changes

• completely rewritten AjaxTables functionality - we fixed all AjaxTables issues and now AjaxDataTables are the default and only option;
• in create/update forms, fields without a tab are displayed before all tabs;

As you can see, we've struggled very hard to make this version as backwards-compatible as possible. As such, the upgrade steps are small, and few projects will be negatively affected, unless they've overwritten default functionality.

Upgrade Steps

Require the latest versions

1. run the commands below (or make these changes in your composer.json and run composer update)

composer require backpack/base:"^0.9.0"
composer require backpack/crud:"^3.4.0"

Upgrade Backpack\Base to 0.9.x

This brings A LOT of new features and makes sure all components are up-to-date.

[OPTIONAL, but recommended]

2. inside your config/app.php file, if you have any Backpack service providers or aliases (any for any Backpack package), you can remove them; they're no longer needed, since L5.5 loads them automatically;
3. Starting with Backpack\Base 0.9.0, we have a new place for you to store your admin routes: routes/backpack/custom.php. That's where CRUD::resource() routes are generated automatically, when you generate a new CRUD. To future-proof your application, you can publish that file using php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Backpack\Base\BaseServiceProvider" --tag=custom_routes, then manually move your existing admin routes there (from your routes/web.php).
4. inside your routes and controllers, replace the admin middleware with the backpack_middleware() helper; this will pull in the admin middleware name, since you can now change that in the config file;
5. The admin middleware's class has been renamed to CheckIfAdmin; if you were extending Backpack\Base\app\Http\Middleware\Admin anywhere, make sure to extend the new class name: Backpack\Base\app\Http\Middleware\CheckIfAdmin;
6. Replace your Auth::user() and Auth::check() calls with backpack_auth()->user() and backpack_auth()->check() etc, everywhere in your admin panel's custom controllers, models, views;

[MANDATORY]

7. Inside resources/views/vendor/backpack/base: 7.1. Delete any base blade files that you have not personally customized; namely layout.blade.php; in most cases you should be left with only inc/sidebar.blade.php; 7.2. Create a inc//sidebar_content.blade.php file and copy all of your sidebar items and subitems there (<li><a href=""></a></li>; here's an example file); 7.3. Delete your resources/views/vendor/backpack/base/inc/sidebar.blade.php file; this is no longer used to store sidebar items, the one above is; and we have the added benefit of being able to do so from the command line;
8. Delete your public/vendor/backpack and public/vendor/adminlte folders; we will republish them shortly;
9. Run php artisan backpack:base:install; this might take a few minutes, but it will republish all assets needed;

Upgrade Backpack\CRUD to 3.4.x

10. if you're using the filemanager (elFinder) or the browse field type, run composer require barryvdh/laravel-elfinder to install it, since it's no longer a mandatory requirement;
11. If you've overwritten the syncPivot() method, please note that it's no longer used inside the Create trait and in the Update trait; It hasn't been deprecated yet, but we do plan to remove it in the future since createRelations() is a complete replacement for it, is more legible and supports 1-n relationships too;
12. If you've overwritten the search() method take a look at the changes and apply them to your own;
13. If you're using elFinder you should probably replace the admin middleware with the configurable name, in you config/elfinder.php, like so;
14. If you've overwritten the delete button, it has suffered massive and important changes; we recommend you delete it from your project, so that the new one gets picked up;
15. If you have custom column type, replace your <td>s with <span>s; example here;
16. If you've overwritten one of the following field types (browse_multiple, date_picker, date_range, datetime_picker, select, select2, select2_from_ajax, select2_from_ajax_multiple, select2_from_array, select2_multiple, date), you should update their JS and CSS assets like we have done here, to make sure it can still reach those assets;
17. If you've overwritten the list.blade.php file, you're in a pickle; the changes are massive; best thing to do would be to delete your file, copy the new one, and make the modifications you need again;
18. Since all DataTables are now responsive, you should check out how your admin panel looks in a small viewport; columns that won't fit will be hidden, so sometimes all that's left is the first column; if that column is date or something like that, no bueno; best thing to do is to reorder the columns so that the most important column is the first one; you can do that by putting one addColumn() statement before all the others, in your ExampleCrudController::setup();
19. Run php artisan view:clear to make sure your views are using the new assets.