Migrate API in Drupal 8: A Tech Talk

December 7, 2016
4 minute read

It’s one of the hottest tools in the Drupal 8 toolkit: the Migrate API, now part of Drupal 8 Core.

If you know how to use it, you can dramatically improve how quickly and efficiently you can upgrade a site to Drupal 8. In addition, you can use it to build regular, repeatable migrations in Drupal 8 that can pull in data from a variety of sources.

That’s why you should tune into this Tech Talk by Adam Jensen, Technical Account Manager at Acquia: (Don’t Hate) Migrate in Drupal 8.

Adam, who’s been at Acquia for more than four years, has experience working with several Acquia customers on major migration projects in Drupal 7. More recently he’s been responsible for building internal tools in Drupal 8 using Migrate to pull data from external services.

In this brisk, 26-minute screencast, Adam shares a bunch of information that will be valuable to anyone who plans to work with Drupal 8.

First, he sets the stage by giving a short history of Migrate, and how it made its way from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. Then he describes the D8 version in the context of the new Drupal 8 Plugin system.

Adam also shares some strategies for dealing with the lack of Drupal 8 documentation, the inevitable result of Drupal 8’s newness.

By the middle of this talk, Adam moves into specifics:

He goes into detail on the different types of Plugin types in Migrate, including MigrateSource, the MigrateProcessPlugin, and MigrateDestination.
If you have to write custom code, Adam’s got advice on that too. The good news is that for most projects, it’s safe to assume that someone in the Drupal community has written at least part of what you need. Adam relates some tips on how to leverage that.
If you find that you need to create something totally new and unique, Adam has some suggestions. (One tip: he recommends looking at an example class, just to see how the structure works.)
Example classes are also a way to deal with the lack of Drupal 8 documentation, mentioned earlier: Adam reminds us that there is a lot of valuable information that can be found in example class code.
That leads to a few more strategies that Adam recommends to counteract the (hopefully temporary) lack of D8 documentation, including his #1 tip: take advantage of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs).
Finally, Adam demos a Drupal-to-Drupal (D2D) migration: importing data from a Drupal 7 site to a Drupal 8 site.

It’s pretty slick, watching that content make the trip from D7 to D8.

And it’s a fitting finale to a worthwhile 26-minute investment in your Drupal skill set.

How to Get This Course

Acquia Academy is available to Acquia customers and partners, and the general Drupal community, through three different portals. Select your portal from the choices below in order to sign up and take this course: