Upgrading from Synthesis 5 or 6 to 7 - blipson89/Synthesis GitHub Wiki

Upgrading to Synthesis 7 is a process that takes a bit of work.

  • First, upgrade the NuGet package to Synthesis 7

  • After upgrading the NuGet package, you should remove the field mappings in Synthesis.config to the removed Word Document field and File Drop Area field types. The Word field mapping may not exist depending on what version you're coming from.

      <map field="File Drop Area" type="Synthesis.FieldTypes.FileListField, Synthesis" /> <!-- remove this from Synthesis.config -->

  • Next, you will need to regenerate the Synthesis model. Do not build the project at this point, because the model format has changed in Synthesis 7 and the existing model will be full of build errors. Hit /synthesis.axd and force a regeneration, which will remove any build errors not caused by a breaking change as outlined above.

    • If some sort of global handler (such as a httpRequestBegin pipeline handler) is causing an error before you even get to synthesis.axd temporarily disable it for the purposes of regenerating the model.

  • By default, a Synthesis 7 upgrade will not enable using interfaces for field types (unless you overwrite Synthesis.config during the install, which is not recommended). Should you wish to enable interfaces, simply look at the default config file and merge the interface attributes in under <fieldMappings> to your config, then regenerate.

  • If using Synthesis.Blade, you will need to change the visibility on GetItem() for any presenters that use SynthesisPresenter as their base class to public, instead of protected.

  • Verify that the case of your content search config patch at the bottom of Synthesis.config matches the case in your Sitecore.ContentSearch.Lucene.DefaultIndexConfiguration.config. The case of the default config changed in Update-2, but depending on how you upgraded yours might not have. See this blog post for details as to why this is necesary. If the case is incorrect, Synthesis LINQ queries will not work correctly.

  • Fix any remaining build issues caused by breaking changes (if any), and test the site.