Drupal Rector is a popular tool that’s designed and developed to perform Drupal code upgrades automatically. Usually the data available about the Drupal Rector usage has been written from a developer perspective, but in this post, we’ll discuss from the project manager perspective of Drupal 8 Website Development company and see what it means for your project.

First, let’s discuss from the Common Perspective:

  • The project manager is responsible to schedule maintenance and upgrades to your portfolio of Drupal websites and applications.
  • Remaining on Drupal 8 introduces project risks as 2021 is approaching in a few months.
  • You can hire Drupal developers to migrate to Drupal 9 to get the best return on your investment in the platform.

    • From the above factors, how Rector can be helpful for your project? Let’s take a look:

  • You can start instantly, getting in front of future risk.
  • Rector is a set of tools used to automatically update the PHP code that runs your Drupal website.
  • The tools are basically targeted at Drupal 9 compatibility.
  • Your development team can use Drupal Rector to migrate your website for Drupal 9.
  • Your team can easily contribute to the stability of the website by contributing to Drupal Rector.



    • What are the Common limitations of Drupal Rector?

  • Using static calls like Drupal->service (‘my_service’)->myMethod(); instead of injecting the service into the class.
  • Avoiding complex use cases, usually during the optional arguments are passed as variables.
  • Rector has a global parameter to manage use statements and we think the benefits eliminate the drawbacks like weird placement or lack of handling of less common patterns.
  • Addressing doc comments in strange ways, mainly around spacing. Rector implements dependencies that sometimes remove empty comments or eliminate white space. At this point, Drupal Development Company does not intend to customize any doc comments, but Rector ends up doing this.

    Once you get to know about Rector, it is easy to update these rules to add these features.

    How to create a configuration file in your project?
    You will require a rector.yml configuration in the root of your repository. This should sit beside your document root like web or docroot.

    This project provides starting files that should handle most use cases.

    If your document root directory is web, you can copy the rector-config-web-dir.yml
    cp vendor/DrupalIndia/drupal-rector/rector-config-web-dir.yml rector.yml
    If your document root directory is docroot, you can copy the rector-config-docroot-dir.yml
    cp vendor/ DrupalIndia /drupal-rector/rector-config-docroot-dir.yml rector.yml

    If your document root directory is something else you will need to manually copy and edit rector.yml.
    Replace the web in these paths with your document root.
    parameters:
    autoload_paths:
    – ‘web/core’
    – ‘web/core/modules’
    – ‘web/modules’
    – ‘web/profiles’

    What is the workflow?
    1. Analyze your code with Rector and review suggested changes:
    $ vendor/bin/rector process web/modules/contrib/[YOUR_MODULE] –dry-run
    2. Apply suggested changes:
    $ vendor/bin/rector process web/modules/contrib/[YOUR_MODULE]

    Drupal-development-company-DrupalIndia

    Why upgrade a website to the Drupal 9 version?

  • Innovative Drupal 9 features– Starting from Drupal 9.1, innovative features will be integrated for better website user-friendliness, accessibility, performance, web security, privacy, and open for integration with latest devices.
  • Latest libraries for better performance– The latest libraries and components, comprising Symfony and Twig, guarantee faster, cleaner, safer, and easier to maintain website.
  • Beautiful and accessible front-end theme– The new front-end theme offers websites a professional appeal, makes them engaging and highly accessible to all audiences as per the standards.
  • Long-term support– Drupal 9 will be supported for years in the future, while Drupal 8 reaches its end-of-life in November 2021.
  • Fast & Easy upgrades– Thanks to backward compatibility, the upgrade is simply like a snap of a finger. All is required is to meet a couple of requirements, which we have discussed below.

    How to get your site ready for Drupal 9?
    Here we have mentioned the major Drupal 9 readiness requirements. The websites should meet the below criteria in order to be instantly ready. For implementing them you can always rely on Drupal Development Company support and maintenance team:

  • Using the newest minor version of Drupal 8
  • Keeping your modules and themes updated
  • Check whether your hosting environment is update
  • Checking and cleaning your website of deprecated code

    Frequently Asked Questions

    1. What is the purpose of Drupal?
    Drupal is free, open source software that can be used by individuals or users having less technical knowledge to easily create and manage different types of websites. The application includes a content management platform and a development framework.

    2. What language does Drupal use?
    Drupal is PHP based language and every developer needs to know PHP language for any development or customization work. The reason for using PHP is it is a programming language that is flexible and simple to learn, even if you come from a different knowledge background.

    3. Is Drupal free to use?
    Drupal is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) having a big and supportive community. It’s used by millions of people and organizations across the globe to build and manage their websites. Government websites are also Drupal built as they demand advanced security and flexibility. Drupal is free to download and with simple modification the platform can be extended.

    4. Is Drupal front end or backend?
    Drupal is not just a frond end or backend. It is a CMS to manage your content with inbuilt template engine. Even Drupal can be used as service to store the content and use some front end tools for displaying content. Many Drupal 8 Website Development company use it.

    Wrapping Up:

    At Drupal India, our team offers customized Drupal migration services. You can perform Drupal 8 Website Development for your business needs but it will be better to use Drupal 9 for better business results. Whether you’d like to build a brand new Drupal site with Rector or extend your existing site with the right modules, we have solution.

    • Drupal 8

    Perform Migration of your Drupal 8 Website to Drupal 9 with Rector

    Contact Us