Skip to main content

v4.2.x to v4.3.x migration guide

The Strapi v4.2.x to v4.3.x migration guide upgrades versions of v4.2.x and above to v4.3.x. This migration guide is needed for all TypeScript users who are using the default SQLite database configuration in their application. The migration to 4.3.3 consists of 3 steps:

  • Upgrading the application dependencies
  • Updating the database configuration script
  • Reinitializing the application
✋ Caution

Plugins extension that create custom code or modify existing code, will need to be updated and compared to the changes in the repository. Not updating the plugin extensions could break the application.

Upgrading the application dependencies to 4.3.x​

☑️ Prerequisites

Stop the server before starting the upgrade. At the time of writing this, the latest version of Strapi is v4.3.3.

  1. Upgrade all of the Strapi packages in the package.json to 4.3.3 or higher:
path: ./package.json

{
  // ...
  "dependencies": {
    "@strapi/strapi": "4.3.3",
    "@strapi/plugin-users-permissions": "4.3.3",
    "@strapi/plugin-i18n": "4.3.3",
    // ...
  }
}

  1. Save the edited package.json file.

  2. Install the upgraded version:

    yarn
    💡 Tip

    If the operation doesn't work, try removing your yarn.lock or package-lock.json. If that doesn't help, remove the node_modules folder as well and try again.

    ✏️ Note

    If you are on a Node <=16.x version, you might get an error stating that the cheerio sub-dependency of of @strapi/plugin-documentation requires node >=18.17.

    The reason is that the version specifier for cheerio in Strapi >=4.2.x is ^1.0.0-rc.12, which used to resolve to the version 1.0.0-rc.12 that supported Node v16, but now it resolves to 1.0.0 (non-rc) which has a requirement for Node >=18.17.

    As a workaround in yarn, you can add a resolution to your package.json that pins cheerio at the exact release candidate that still supports Node v16:

    path: ./package.json
    {
      // ...
      "resolutions": {
        "@strapi/plugin-documentation/**/cheerio": "1.0.0-rc.12"
      },
      // ...
    }

    Next, run yarn again. When you upgrade to a later Strapi version that supports Node 18, remove this resolution.

Updating the database configuration script​

This step is only required if you use the default SQLite database configuration in a TypeScript project.

To make sure you don't lose your data every time the development server restarts, you need to make a modification to the ./config/database.ts file. This modification tells Strapi to use the correct file for your database.

To change the script:

  1. In the ./config/database.ts file, Identify the default SQLite database configuration.
  2. Copy and paste the following line to the replace the filename key of the SQLite configuration:
path: ./config/database.ts
filename: path.join(__dirname, '..', '..', env('DATABASE_FILENAME', '.tmp/data.db')),

Rebuild the application​

Run the following command in your project root directory to rebuild Strapi's admin panel:

yarn build

Restart the application​

Run the following command in your project root directory to restart the application:

yarn develop