To understand the What and Why of Composer, let's first explain how "updates" and "upgrades" differ. The migration of a Drupal website from one major version to another is called an upgrade.
For example, we are upgrading from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 or Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. A website undergoes an update by switching from one minor version to another. A good example would be switching from Drupal 8.5.3 to Drupal 8.5.6.
Why Composer?
Do you know what Composer is? In PHP, Composer manages dependencies. This way, you can declare and manage the libraries your project depends on or the modules that make up your website. Symfony components and other packages can easily be managed.
Start by asking yourself why you need Composer when you can update the Drupal core and modules through Drupal's website simply by downloading them. Since Drupal's official website doesn't provide a module download facility, updating your Drupal-powered website takes work. The reasons for this are:
Several modules and themes are only compatible with third-party libraries. After installing modules, managing third-party libraries is tedious.
Some modules and packages require a certain version of PHP or Drupal. When you upgrade the Drupal core and modules, you may encounter some version-related problems, which you need to resolve manually.
You may encounter conflicts when running the composer update on the command line. The composer.json file needs to be reviewed to resolve the issue.
Upgrading to Drupal 9 has several major benefits.
Enhanced performance and security
The performance results of Drupal 9 are even better, including:
The BigPipe caching strategy improves the authoring experience and multiple content workflows by caching in-core pages, blocks, and views and a new internal dynamic page cache for anonymous users. The Symfony 3 framework will be replaced with Symfony 4 or 5 (after November 2021), and Twig 2.0 will be upgraded.
Responsive image support has been implemented, which provides mobiles with the best image size, consumes less data, and speeds up websites. It is no longer necessary to re-architect Drupal 8 to support multilingual capabilities during the update.
More content fields are available, such as phone, email, date, and time. It will be easier to render since Memcached and Redis will be supported.
Drupal 9 contains no obsolete code or vulnerabilities, which leads to fewer security problems and updates, including for third-party dependencies. While most code interfaces remain unchanged, developers won't have any problems migrating or supporting.
Easy upgrade process
Drupal 9 has the advantage of being easy to migrate. You will need to rebuild the entire site whenever you migrate from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. Drupal 9 is backward-compatible with Drupal 8, and many Drupal eight modules will work with Drupal 9.
Conversational UI and user-friendliness
In terms of the user interface, Drupal 9 offers the following benefits:
- A new user interface and navigation system for administrators
- A simpler way to manage contents, taxonomies, users, blocks, and themes
- Putting mobile first
- Easy management of CMS updates
In addition to being user-friendly, these updates make Drupal even more accessible to marketers and developers. Improvements to usability include:
- Workflows for the updated editorial process
- Up-to-date Media Library
- Admin interface and theme changes
- Coding improvements
- In addition, code cleanup improves:
- Code structure optimization;
- With TWIG's template engine, there is a cleaner codebase and a better templating process;
- By removing deprecated codes, the website's performance will improve since deprecated codes no longer have any further support.
E-commerce empowerment
In Drupal 9, e-commerce is a key feature, including modules for integrating with e-commerce platforms such as Elastic Path, Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Content-driven commerce experiences are possible by synchronizing products from e-commerce sites with Drupal entities.
By optimizing key digital assets and product information, the new release introduces an API-first architecture, including JSON: API, which makes it easy to develop robust, decoupled, and headless applications that can be easily integrated with DAM and PIM.
Consequently, it offers Drupal Headless CMS and Magento to help companies build the powerful front end of the website using JavaScript framework, thereby enhancing front-end freedom and simplifying resource management.
Data platform integration and personalization
Additionally, Drupal 9 offers seamless integration with the following applications via the built-in JSON API:
- CDP Acquia
- Tools for external analytics
- CRM, DMP, and CDP
Providing a consistent experience across all channels will save you money and ensure security. Upgrade your website to Drupal 9 for better usability, accessibility, inclusiveness, flexibility, and scalability:
- Marketing-friendly
- Easy to maintain and upgrade for developers
- The headless, decoupled design makes it more powerful.
Update Drupal core and modules using Composer
Updating your Drupal core and modules requires a basic understanding of Composer. On Drupal's official website, you will find documentation and online tutorials. Composer must be installed on your development machine before you can execute Composer commands. It allows you to run the installer directly from the command line.
After creating the website project template with Composer, the next step is to set it up. Before updating the database or files, take a backup. Drush SQL-dump can be used to back up a database dump.
The drush archive-dump command can be used to back up code and files. A single directory backup can be taken with Drush 8. In the case of a Drush 9 upgrade, the command would not work, and you would have to use tar instead.
Find out what updates are available for Drupal core and packages.
Verify which Drupal core and package versions are available before you update them. Install Drupal 8 using the command line interface by running Composer outdated, which provides a complete package list, including Symfony's components.
You can verify whether drupal core versions are available for the update by using Composer's outdated drupal/*. All core versions that require an update are listed there.
Update Drupal 8 core
To learn what issues the release resolves, read the release notes. You can then determine which packages and versions need to be updated. To activate maintenance mode, use the drush set system.maintenance_mode 1. Use brush cr to clear the caches.
Composer commands can be used to update the Drupal core and its dependencies. Ensure the cache is clear with drush cr after updating any pending databases using Drush updb. You can check the Drupal website's status on the reports->available updates page.
Reporting errors and testing the website can be found in the reports->status section—set system.maintenance_mode 0 to disable maintenance mode. Clear the cache by running the command drush cr.
Update modules
Composer is the easiest way to update Drupal 8 modules. The Composer downloads the required dependencies along with the modules. Suppose you wish to install a single module.
In that case, it is best to use the Composer command required "drupal/": "version." For example, Composer requires "drupal/social_auth_google:2.0" downloads the latest version of the Social auth login module.
Using League Google Provider for OAuth 2.0, you can run the Social Auth Google module. The Composer ensures that your module is compatible by downloading the correct SDK version.
In the vendor directory, verify the League folder. You can update Drupal 8 core and modules substantially easier using Composer if you understand the basics.