eZ Publish 5 has a strong focus on backwards compatibility and thus lets you reuse code you might have written for 4.x, including templates and modules.
Hint
Read Intro for eZ Publish 4.x/3.x developers to have an overview of common concepts and terminology changes.
Legacy Mode
Legacy mode is a specific configuration mode where eZ Publish's behavior is the closest to v4.x. It might be used in some very specific use cases, such as running the admin interface.
What it does
- Still runs through the whole Symfony kernel. As such, Symfony services can still be accessed from legacy stack.
- Disables the UrlAliasRouter. As such, the ViewController will be bypassed.
What it doesn't do
- Increase performance. Legacy mode is actually painful for performances since it won't use the HttpCache mechanism.
In a migration context, using Legacy Mode is never a good option as it prevents all the performance goodness (e.g. Http Cache) to work.
Always keep in mind that, not running in legacy mode, if a content still doesn't have a corresponding Twig template/controller, eZ Publish will always fallback to the legacy kernel, looking for a legacy template.
Legacy Template inclusion
It is possible to include old templates (.tpl) into new ones.
Include a legacy template using the old template override mechanism
Or if you want to include a legacy template by its path, relative to ezpublish_legacy folder:
eZ Publish 5.1+
Template parameters
Scalar and array parameters are passed to a legacy template as-is.
Objects, however, are being converted in order to comply the legacy eZ Template API. By default a generic adapter is used, exposing all public properties and getters. You can define your own converter by implementing the appropriate interface and declare it as a service with the ezpublish_legacy.templating.converter tag.
Content / Location objects from the Public API are converted into eZContentObject/eZContentObjectTreeNode objects (re-fetched).
Running legacy code
eZ Publish 5 still relies on the legacy kernel (from 4.x) and runs it when needed inside an isolated PHP closure, making it sandboxed. This is available for your use as well making it possible to run some PHP code inside that sandbox through the runCallback() method.
Simple legacy code example
The example above is very simple and naive - in fact for accessing configuration settings from the Legacy Stack using the ConfigResolver is recommended.
Using the legacy closure, you'll be able to even run complex legacy features, like an eZ Find search:
Using eZ Find
Legacy modules
Routing fallback & sub-requests
Any route that is not declared in eZ Publish 5 in an included routing.yml and that is not a valid UrlAlias will automatically fallback to eZ Publish legacy (including admin interface).
This allows all your old modules to work as before, out-of-the-box (including kernel modules), and also allows you to reuse this code from your templates using sub requests:
Template legacy module sub-request
Using eZ Publish 5 and Symfony features in Legacy
If for some reason you need to develop a legacy module and access to eZ Publish 5 / Symfony features (i.e. when developing an extension for admin interface), you'll be happy to know that you actually have access to all services registered in the whole framework, including bundles, through the service container.
The example below shows how to retrieve the content repository and the logger.
Retrieve services from the container
Tip
The example above works in legacy modules and CLI scripts
Running legacy scripts and cronjobs
Note: This feature has been introduced in eZ Publish 5.1.
Important
Running legacy scripts and cronjobs through the Symfony stack is highly recommended !
Otherwise, features from the Symfony stack cannot be used (i.e. HTTP cache purge) and cache clearing. NB: Some script we know won't affect cache, are still documented to be executed the direct way.
Legacy scripts can be executed form the Symfony CLI, by using the ezpublish:legacy:script command, specifying the path to the script as argument.
The command will need to be executed from eZ Publish's 5 root, and the path to the desired script must exist in the ezpublish_legacy folder.
Here's a usage example:
php ezpublish/console ezpublish:legacy:script bin/php/ezpgenerateautoloads.php
If you want to access the script's help please be aware that you will need to use the newly introduced --legacy-help option, since --help is already reserved for the CLI help.
The --legacy-help option should be added before the path to the script for this to work.
Here's an example:
php ezpublish/console ezpublish:legacy:script --legacy-help bin/php/ezpgenerateautoloads.php
The same logic will apply for cronjob execution.
Legacy cronjobs are triggered by the runcronjobs.php legacy script, which expects the name of the cronjob to run as a parameter.
This is how you can run cronjobs from the Symfony CLI:
php ezpublish/console ezpublish:legacy:script runcronjobs.php frequent
Also, if you require using additional script options, please be sure to use the long name, such as --siteaccess or --debug to avoid conflicts between script and CLI options.
For more details regarding legacy cronjobs execution please refer to the Running cronjobs chapter existing in doc.ez.no.