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Upgrading to PHP 8.1

info

Estimated Upgrade Time: 1.5 Hours

DreamFactory is committed to making the shift from PHP 7.2 to PHP 8.1 as simple as possible. Some services have undergone significant changes as a result of third-party API providers. We have compiled a list of all services that have experienced noticeable changes, which you can find below. While it's not necessary to update all of these services, if you are using any of them, we recommend that you review the relevant section to expedite the development of your dream API.

warning

This article assumes that you are not using our automatic installers. However, if you have a different operating system or prefer not to handle the installation process manually, you can refer to the relevant guide here. Note that these steps are intended for those using the Supported Ubuntu Release.

Switch to PHP 8.1​

This section demonstrates how to migrate from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.1 on Ubuntu 20.04.

  1. Add PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php -y
  1. Install PHP 8.1 and the required dependencies:
sudo apt-get install -y php8.1-common \
php8.1-xml \
php8.1-cli \
php8.1-fpm \
php8.1-curl \
php8.1-mysqlnd \
php8.1-sqlite \
php8.1-soap \
php8.1-mbstring \
php8.1-zip \
php8.1-bcmath \
php8.1-dev \
php8.1-ldap \
php8.1-pgsql \
php8.1-interbase \
php8.1-gd \
php8.1-sybase
  1. After successful installation, manually switch to PHP 8.1:
sudo update-alternatives --set php /usr/bin/php8.1 \
sudo update-alternatives --set phar /usr/bin/phar8.1 \
sudo update-alternatives --set phar.phar /usr/bin/phar.phar8.1 \
  1. Select the version of PHP you need by using:
sudo update-alternatives --config php
warning

If you would like to know how to install the dependencies for the DreamFactory packages that you are interested in, you can refer to the table of contents below for guidance.

Command pecl install may fail with a message like:

pecl/sqlsrv is already installed and is the same as the released version 5.10.1 install failed

In this case use force install: pecl install -f <extension_name>

Configure NGINX​

If you are using FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) with NGINX or Apache, you must update your DreamFactory installation's host configuration. To update the configuration for NGINX, modify the version of PHP specified in the Nginx server configuration file, which is located at /etc/nginx/sites-available/default.

-fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
+fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;

Now you can update your DreamFactory instance to the latest version.

  1. Use the git pull command from the DreamFactory root directory.
  2. Next, run the composer install command.
  3. To complete the process, restart fpm and nginx:
sudo service php8.1-fpm restart && service nginx restart

Table of contents​

Free Plan​

Cassandra​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

To use the Cassandra service, you must recompile the driver and install the client library if you haven’t already.

Download and extract the client library for Apache Cassandra. From the downloaded repository, run the following commands:

sudo apt install -y --no-install-recommends libgmp-dev libpcre3-dev libssl-dev libuv1-dev cmake
mkdir build       &&\
pushd build       &&\
cmake ..          &&\
make              &&\
sudo make install &&\
popd

Download the DataStax PHP Driver for Apache Cassandra. Make sure that you are on the 1.3.x branch. From the downloaded repository, run the following command:

# Currently, we are using a specific version of the repository that is still functional, 
# as the recent efforts to enhance the installation process do not work properly.
git checkout 1cf12c5ce49ed43a2c449bee4b7b23ce02a37bf0 &&\
pushd ext         &&\
phpize            &&\
popd              &&\
mkdir build       &&\
pushd build       &&\
../ext/configure  &&\
make              &&\
sudo make install &&\
popd

Make sure cassandra.so is built.

find /usr/lib/php/20210902/cassandra.so

If cassandra.so exists, connect it to PHP's modules.

echo 'extension=cassandra.so' | sudo tee /etc/php/8.1/mods-available/cassandra.ini
sudo phpenmod -v 8.1 -s ALL cassandra

Couchbase​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

With the new release of DreamFactory, we removed Couchbase from the list of supported services. There is a possibility that support for Couchbase may be reinstated in a future release.

Email​

Likelihood Of Impact: Low

The Mandrill & SparkPost mail drivers have been removed from Laravel 6. These services have technically not been supported by DreamFactory since its migration to Laravel 6. For this reasone these services are no longer displayed in the Services tab.

Firebird​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

If you are using Firebird with major version 3, then it must be at least version 3.0.4. This is due to usage of the LOCALTIMESTAMP parameter.

To use the Firebird service, you need to install/recompile a driver compatible with PHP 8.1. Use --with-pdo-firebird to install the PDO Firebird extension or install php81-interbase package from ppa:ondrej/php.

GitHub​

Likelihood Of Impact: Medium

DreamFactory provided the ability to authenticate through the REST API using an account password or personal access token to perform authenticated API operations on GitHub.com. Beginning November 13th, 2020, GitHub announced that they no longer accept account passwords when authenticating via the REST API and require the use of token-based authentication. If you have a registered DreamFactory GitHub service, ensure to specify a personal access token. For more information, follow the Deprecating password authentication information found here.

Mongo logs​

Likelihood Of Impact: Low

DreamFactory supports a very simple solution for logging all requests. All records requested in the API are written to the database. The implication is that DreamFactory relies on MongoDB PHP driver. You can easily install the required dependency with pecl. After that, run these two commands:

echo 'extension=mongodb.so' | sudo tee /etc/php/8.1/mods-available/mongodb.ini
sudo phpenmod -s ALL mongodb

Apache Hive​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

In order to use the service, you must have both the PDO and ODBC PHP extensions installed, which are available for download from this PPA with the names php8.1-pdo and php8.1-odbc, respectively. Additionally, the MapR ODBC Driver must be installed, which you can obtain by downloading from this link or through the Amazon cloud, as we do. To install MapR ODBC Driver run:

cd /opt \
&& sudo curl --fail -O https://odbc-drivers.s3.amazonaws.com/apache-hive/maprhiveodbc_2.6.1.1001-2_amd64.deb \
&& sudo dpkg -i maprhiveodbc_2.6.1.1001-2_amd64.deb \
&& test -f /opt/mapr/hiveodbc/lib/64/libmaprhiveodbc64.so \
&& rm maprhiveodbc_2.6.1.1001-2_amd64.deb

Note that it's crucial to install the extension using a specific path. So the full path to the driver must be - /opt/mapr/hiveodbc/lib/64/libmaprhiveodbc64.so

Azure Active Directory​

Likelihood Of Impact: Low

Microsoft announced that Azure AD Graph has been deprecated as of June 30, 2023. For this reason, DreamFactory migrated towards Microsoft Graph. For more information, follow the details available here.

IBM Db2​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

DreamFactory services that work with IBM databases use software that can be loaded from ibm.com. This section is appointed for a self-hosted environment. To make DreamFactory work with the IBM Db2, you need to complete the following steps:

Sign in to your IBM account, or create a new one. Download the client driver package:

https://epwt-www.mybluemix.net/software/support/trial/cst/programwebsite.wss?siteId=853&h=null&p=null

Extract the downloaded file. From the “dsdriver” subdirectory, generate “db2profile” and “db2cshrc” script files:

sudo -s \
&& tar -xvf ibm_data_server_driver_package_linuxx64_v11.5.tar.gz -C /opt/ \
&& cd /opt/dsdriver \
&& apt install -y ksh \
&& ./installDSDriver

Set the environment variables using:

source db2profile (for the Bash or Korn shell)
source db2cshrc (for the C shell)

Clone the PDO_IBM source code from GitHub. Note that this must be done from the same terminal since db2profile | db2cshrc sets the environment variables in the current terminal session.

git clone https://github.com/php/pecl-database-pdo_ibm /opt/PDO_IBM && \
cd /opt/PDO_IBM

From the cloned repository run:

export CPATH=/opt/dsdriver/include
phpize \
&& ./configure --with-pdo-ibm=/opt/dsdriver \
&& make \
&& make install \
&& exit

Check for the presence of pdo_ibm.so:

find "/usr/lib/php/20210902/pdo_ibm.so"

If pdo_ibm.so exists, connect it to PHP's modules:

echo 'extension=pdo_ibm.so' | sudo tee /etc/php/8.1/mods-available/pdo_ibm.ini && \
sudo phpenmod -v 8.1 -s ALL pdo_ibm

IBM Informix​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

DreamFactory services that work with IBM databases use software that can be loaded from ibm.com. This section is appointed for a self-hosted environment. To make DreamFactory work with the IBM Informix, you need to take the following steps:

Sign in to your IBM account or create a new one. Download the Informix Client SDK.

Download Informix Client SDK ➜ IBM Informix Client SDK downloads ➜ Fill out the form ➜ Select appropriate version ➜ Download tar file

SDK may require you to install libncurses.so.5:

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libncurses5 libncurses5:i386

Extract and install the SDK:

sudo -s
tar -xvf your_archive
./installclientsdk

Now we have two options to install pdo_informix.so: using pecl or by building it manually. We prefer the second method since we have had limited success with the pecl method.

Download the PDO_INFORMIX archive and extract it. From the extracted PDO_INFORMIX-1.3.x folder run:

phpize \
&& ./configure --with-pdo-informix=/opt/IBM/Informix_Client-SDK \
&& make \
&& make install \
&& exit

If you decide to test your luck, and install PDO_INFORMIX using pecl, run:

sudo pecl install PDO_INFORMIX

Set the environment variables in .profile, and open the file for editing with:

sudo nano ~/.profile

Add the following lines to the bottom of the file:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/IBM/Informix_Client-SDK/lib:/opt/IBM/Informix_Client-SDK/lib/esql" 
export INFORMIXDIR="/opt/IBM/Informix_Client-SDK"

Make sure pdo_informix.so is built using:

find /usr/lib/php/20210902/pdo_informix.so

If pdo_informix.so exists, connect it to PHP's modules with:

echo 'extension=pdo_informix.so' | sudo tee /etc/php/8.1/mods-available/pdo_informix.ini && \
sudo phpenmod -v 8.1 -s ALL pdo_informix

LDAP & Active Directory​

Likelihood Of Impact: Low

DreamFactory uses Lightweight Directory Access Protocol to lookup information or devices within a network. Therefore, to continue working with these services, you need to install the LDAP extension for the new version of PHP. For a quick setup, see the 'Installing the PHP extension' section.

MQTT​

Likelihood Of Impact: Low

Previously, the MQTT service relied on the Mosquitto-PHP extension, which in turn relies upon the libmosquitto library. This service no longer depends on the system's needs and contains everything needed to work on its own.

Oracle​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

tip

This section shows the minimum number of steps to set up required dependencies so that DreamFactory can work with Oracle. For a complete setup, follow the official guide.

To use the Oracle service, you need to install the new version of the oci8 extension compatible with PHP 8.1. You can seamlessly install the required extension version you need via pecl. But before installation, you need to go through a few more steps:

Download the desired Instant Client and the corresponding SDK Package. This example uses the RPM packages.

https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/instant-client/downloads.html

Install the necessary dependencies using:

sudo apt install -y alien libaio1

Install the Oracle client packages, which can take a few minutes, with this command:

sudo alien -i oracle-instantclient-basic-21.9.0.0.0-1.el8.x86_64.rpm
sudo alien -i oracle-instantclient-devel-21.9.0.0.0-1.el8.x86_64.rpm

Now you are ready to install the oci8 extension. The latest version is compatible with PHP 8.1 at present, but you may need to specify the version explicitly.

sudo pecl install oci8 (php 8.1 exactly what we need)
sudo pecl install oci8-2.2.0 (php 7)

Once complete, make sure that OCI is loaded:

php -m | grep oci8

#oci8

If you do not see oci8 in PHP's modules, ensure that the configuration file and the OCI shared library file are plugged in.

Check for the presence of osi8.so:

find "/usr/lib/php/20210902/oci8.so"

If osi8.so exists, connect it to PHP's modules by running:

echo 'extension=oci8.so' | sudo tee /etc/php/8.1/mods-available/oci8.ini && \
sudo phpenmod -v 8.1 -s ALL oci8

SAP SQL Anywhere​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

tip

We have an article on installing the necessary dependencies for SQL Anywhere on CentOS.

To complete this process, install the Sybase module from PPA. See the how to add PPA to your Apt repositories section. This package provides php8.1-pdo-dblib, which is what is needed.

sudo apt install php8.1-sybase

Once complete, make sure that the driver is installed successfully. Confirm both PDO and the pdo_dblib extensions are present:

php -m
...
#PDO
#pdo_dblib
...

Snowflake​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

To use the Snowflake service, you need to recompile the pdo_snowflake driver using the new PHP version. After completion, make sure the module is installed into the proper extensions directory. For more infomation you can access the official guide here.

Microsoft SQL Server​

Likelihood Of Impact: High

To use a Microsoft SQL Server database, you should ensure that you have the sqlsrv and pdo_sqlsrv PHP extensions installed, as well as any dependencies they may require such as the Microsoft SQL ODBC driver.

Install ODBC libraries for UNIX from the Microsoft repository:

sudo apt install -y unixodbc-dev

If you are encountering issues with the unixodbc-dev package, it may be due to a recent release. As a workaround, you can lock the package version to a stable one (e.g. v2.3.7) until a fix is released. For more details, refer to the relevant issue.

Install sqlsrv and pdo_sqlsrv from pecl:

sudo pecl install sqlsrv
sudo pecl install pdo_sqlsrv

Check for the presence of sqlsrv and pdo_sqlsrv:

find "/usr/lib/php/20210902/sqlsrv.so"
find "/usr/lib/php/20210902/pdo_sqlsrv.so"

If you get both SO files, connect it to PHP's modules:

echo 'extension=sqlsrv.so' | sudo tee /etc/php/8.1/mods-available/sqlsrv.ini
sudo phpenmod -v 8.1 -s ALL sqlsrv

echo 'extension=pdo_sqlsrv.so' | sudo tee /etc/php/8.1/mods-available/pdo_sqlsrv.ini
sudo phpenmod -v 8.1 -s ALL pdo_sqlsrv

Finally, install the Microsoft ODBC driver for SQL Server following the official guide, or using the Microsoft repository.

Installing the PHP extension​

Installation of the necessary dependencies can be quite an agonizing process, so concerned people make this process as painless as possible. Ondřej Surý maintains the repository with PHP packages and is a very well-respected contributor to the PHP community. See how you can install the required PHP dependencies in three easy steps.

First add ppa:ondrej/php to our APT repositories with:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

Update list of available packages:

sudo apt update

Install the required dependency. In this example, we demonstrate the installation of the LDAP extension:

sudo apt install php8.1-ldap