Upgrading to FAL¶

What needs to be considered when you’re upgrading from a 4.x TYPO3 version to FAL?

Migration Steps¶

When a pre-FAL installation is migrated to FAL, these are the steps that need to be done. This is what the TYPO3 6.2 upgrade wizard does ((may need verification)):

File mounts in the sys_filemounts table are migrated. See t3api62:TYPO3\CMS\Install\Updates\FilemountUpdateWizard
For every mount point with an absolute path, a new sys_file_storage record is created with has the absolute path as base path.
For every mount point, the sys_file_mount record is converted to a new structure where mounts act as “filters” on storages which can be assigned to users
A new “storage” record is created by the upgrade wizard which mounts the “fileadmin/” directory in your installation
The media and image fields of the content (tt_content) and pages (pages) tables are changed to use proper FAL relations. This means:
- Each image is moved to the fileadmin directory.
- For each new file in fileadmin/, a sys_file record is created. This entry is also called the “index record”.
- If the same image but with a different name is encountered it is NOT move to fileadmin. Instead the first image is used again.
- For each usage of the file from a content element (table “tt_content”), a relation record has been created in table sys_file_reference which relates the content record to the index record table sys_file. This also includes overlays from the content element for the image title, description and alternative text, plus the file links.
Extensions need to be made compatible. They will still worked as long as the backwards-compatibility layer was active. But this layer was just a transitional tool and has been removed in TYPO3 version 7.

Attention

The TYPO3 6.2 upgrade wizards only migrate standard TYPO3 tables. See

t3api62:TYPO3\CMS\Install\Updates\TceformsUpdateWizard
t3api62:TYPO3\CMS\Install\Updates\FilemountUpdateWizard
t3api62:TYPO3\CMS\Install\Updates\RteFileLinksUpdateWizard
t3api62:TYPO3\CMS\Install\Updates\RteMagicImagesUpdateWizard

Extension compatibility¶

Generally, all extensions which just use files in a frontend extension or have database records with files attached to them should continue to work without any adaption.

Note

DAM does not work with FAL currently, and FAL will not support using the DAM; instead, FAL provides an alternative. Extensions which depend on DAM need manual adaption, see the developers section for more details.

However, if you want to support FAL “the right way” and not just by means of the backwards compatibility layer, the extensions should be updated to make use of the API as outlined in the developers documentation.

Tips and tricks¶

Tip

Add your specific tables and fields to the parameter array in the update wizard of TYPO3 6.2 and make the install tool migrated your custom file fields as well!

You can make the 6.2 update wizard migrate your custom fields of type ‘file’ as well.

Check the code at t3api62:TYPO3\CMS\Install\Updates\TceformsUpdateWizard

Add your own tables and fields to the configuration array:

/**
 * Table fields to migrate
 * @var array
 */
protected $tables = array(
   // ...
   'pages' => array(
      'media' => array(
         'sourcePath' => 'uploads/media/',
         // Relative to fileadmin
         'targetPath' => '_migrated/media/'
      )
   ),
   'tx_myextension_abc' => array(
      'my_image_field' => array(
         'sourcePath' => 'uploads/tx_myextension/',
         'targetPath' => '_migrated/tx_myextension/'
      )
  ),
  // ...
);

Run the update wizard in the install tool as usual.

Using Remote Storages¶

To use a remote storage, you have to do two things:

Install a driver extension for the remote system (e.g. WebDAV)

Drivers are shipped in normal TYPO3 extensions and can be found on the TYPO3 Extension Repository. One example driver is the “WebDAV” driver (https://forge.typo3.org/projects/extension-fal_webdav), but it is also possible to program a custom driver which could e.g. connect to a cloud storage like Amazon S3 or similar.

Once the driver extension is installed, you can proceed to the next step.
Create a new Storage record for the remote storage

When you create the Storage record for the remote Storage, you are asked for more details on the connection to the remote Storage such as authentification credentials (if necessary) and server URLs. Once the Storage is configured, its data should be shown in the File > Filelist module just like files from a local storage.

Indexing¶

TODO: Write.

fine-tuning
cron-automation
housekeeping

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)¶

What happened to the TCEForms “group” field with internal_type “file”?: It’s still working in the same way it used to work, copying files to the uploads/ folder for maximum backwards compatibility. However, it is adviced to adopt extensions to use FAL natively as the field type is now deprecated.
What happened to the typo3temp/ folder?: The typo3temp/ folder is no longer used for files that are used in your site’s content. Instead, a configurable temporary directory per storage (the “processing folder”) replaces that concept. Temporary files are now called “processedFiles” and are tracked in the database table sys_file_processedfile.