Unable to upgrade to PHP 8.x

[DrBobMiller]

I have a Joomla 3 site that I recently updated to 3.10.10 . In fact, I have an XAMPP version on my PC, and both an online "Live" site and an online private "Dev" site version that I use for testing changes that I will then add to the live site.

I know that I need to upgrade to Joomla 4.x, but I find I cannot run my site with PHP 8.x -- not on the XAMPP site or the online "Dev" site. It runs fine with PHP 7.4, but when I try to use PHP 8.0 or 8.1, I get an error message "0 - Call to a member function isAdmin() on null".

I get exactly the same error message on both my local XAMPP site and my online Dev site.

I have searched online (including in this forum) for clues on how to fix this, and found a promising explanation that indicated that the poster's old version of Joomla did not have the newer version of PHP in his plugin phpversioncheck.php, so he needed to update that. I checked the phpversioncheck.php in my sites, and they all support php 8.0 and 8.1.

Any other suggestions?

[JasnaSontag]

Stay on php 7.4, Joomla 4 will work on php 8.0, this one can't.

[brian]

Its nothing to do with the php version. The problem is that the code shown in the error message is not compatible with joomla 4. You will need to find that code in one of your extensions and chanage it to isSite('administrator')

[pe7er]

Stay on php 7.4, Joomla 4 will work on php 8.0, this one can't.

Yes, you can stay on PHP 7.4 until 28 Nov 2022.
After that the PHP developers won't release any security updates anymore for the 7.4 series:
https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

As Brian wrote, you have 3rd party extensions that are not compatible with Joomla 4.
You could contact the developers of those extensions, try to fix the issues yourself, or remove the extensions (and use alternatives that are PHP 8 compatible).

[DrBobMiller]

Hi, Peter --

OK, thanks for your replies. Let me ask about a plan to figure out which extension or extensions are the problem.

The problem is severe in that I cannot even get in to the Admin when running PHP 8.x. So it seems like I would have to do something like this:

1) Set PHP 7.4 to get in to the Admin, at which point I could disable one extension, or maybe even all of them

2) Change to PHP 8.1 and try to run the site.

I could do something like this on the xampp site on my hard drive, and see what I could learn.

Does this plan sound reasonable to you? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your guidance!

[pe7er]

Yes, testing it on a local site is a good idea.

I would:

• set the PHP version to 7.4
• create a backup using Akeeba Backup
• install it in a local environment (XAMP) using Akeeba kickstart
• in Global Configuration set Error Reporting to Maximum
• disable all 3rd party Plugins (especially the ones of Type "System" and "Content")
• switch the local environment to PHP 8.0 and test again
• if everything works ok, switch on the plugins you just disabled, one-by-one
• test the website after every new enabled plugin to determine which one crashed your site.

[DrBobMiller]

As I typed notes on this, it occurs to me that it would be easier to do this testing on the online Dev site, since that lets me quickly change PHP version in CPANEL. XAMPP versions each have a specific PHP version baked in, making it hard to do this testing.

[gws]

Use wampserver rather than Xampp, you can change php version on the fly with wampserver.

[Webdongle]

Yes, testing it on a local site is a good idea.

I would:

• set the PHP version to 7.4
• create a backup using Akeeba Backup
• install it in a local environment (XAMP) using Akeeba kickstart
• in Global Configuration set Error Reporting to Maximum
• disable all 3rd party Plugins (especially the ones of Type "System" and "Content")
• switch the local environment to PHP 8.0 and test again
• if everything works ok, switch on the plugins you just disabled, one-by-one
• test the website after every new enabled plugin to determine which one crashed your site.

All except I would recommend Wamp instead of xampp because with Wamp you can change php on the fly

[DrBobMiller]

Hi, Peter

"Here there be dragons..."

Yesterday I started following your suggested plan, typing lots of notes as I went. In Global Configuration, I set Error Reporting to Maximum, then I disabled System plugins and tried it with PHP 7.4 : where it ran with limitations, as I expected.

Then I used CPANEL to change to PHP 8.1.
⦁ it let me in to what looked like Admin, in that I could see the main menu of Admin,
⦁ but every page would show the same error "0 Call to a member function isAdmin() on null "
⦁ When I tried to view the site, it showed me an error 404 box

Since it was the end of the day, I reverted my changes to the the way it had been, i.e. working fully with PHP 7.4.

It was at this time that I noticed that you had said "disable all 3rd party Plugins (especially the ones of Type "System" and "Content")" : I had forgotten to disable 3rd-party Content items .

This AM disabled the same System plugins as yesterday, and then disabled 3rd-party Content items . When I tried to run this in PHP 7.4, I got an "Error 403 Access Denied".

I then tried disabling those 3rd party System items, and then disabling the 3rd-party Content items one at a time. This worked fine for about the first 2/3rds of these items .

But then I got a real crash: ijSEO FAILED with messages:

• Warning: Use of undefined constant DS - assumed 'DS' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/tracedev/public_html/plugins/content/imageloader/imageloader.php on line 10
  
  Warning: require_once(/home/tracedev/public_html/plugins/content/imageloaderDShelper.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/tracedev/public_html/plugins/content/imageloader/imageloader.php on line 10
  
  Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required '/home/tracedev/public_html/plugins/content/imageloaderDShelper.php' (include_path='/home/tracedev/public_html/plugins/system/shlib/shl_packages//ZendFramework-1.11.7-minimal/library:.:/opt/cpanel/ea-php74/root/usr/share/pear') in /home/tracedev/public_html/plugins/content/imageloader/imageloader.php on line 10

I'm no longer able to get back to the admin. I don't know how to fix this, other than to reinstall from a recent backup (which I DO have).

Thanks in advance for any comments you can make. I'll do some other work for awhile, hoping to hear from you before I just replace my Dev site from a backup and start over.

"Are we having fun yet...?"

[Webdongle]

https://www.[youtube].com/watch?v=ZO9nmdsLlFw might help you trace the problem

[pe7er]

Hi Bob,

I indeed wrote "disable all 3rd party Plugins (especially the ones of Type "System" and "Content")".
But do not disable Joomla's core plugins. Some are needed to login into the system.

The front-end of your site probably gives errors because it seems to have template overrides that are not compatible with Joomla 4. You could try switching the template to the default J4 template Cassiopeia. Or disable the template overrides by renaming the override folder /templates/your-template/html/ to /templates/your-template/html-old/

isAdmin() has been removed from Joomla 4, see
https://docs.joomla.org/Potential_backw ... n_Joomla_4

You wrote "Here there be dragons..." but stumbled on a dinosaur instead :-)
The error with "DS" is regarding a Directory Separator. The DS constant has been deprecated since Joomla 1.6 and removed in Joomla 3, see https://github.com/joomla-extensions/je ... /issues/58
The Content Plugin "imageloader" is not compatible with Joomla 4.

I hope this helps you a bit...

[DrBobMiller]

Hey gws and Webdongle --

Thanks for letting me know that WAMP let's you change PHP on the fly! I'm gonna give that a serious look, and probably switch!

[DrBobMiller]

Hi, Peter --

At this point I am not even trying to use Joomla 4. I use a template from Joomlashack, and they say they are busy working on converting their many extensions, and have not even started upgrading their templates yet.

I would much prefer to use a Joomla 4 version of my Joomlashack template, so I am only working in Joomla 3 at this time.

I have made no attempt to disable any of Joomla's core plugins.

Thanks again for your guidance!

[Webdongle]

https://www.wampserver.com

Wampserver 3.2.6 64 bit x64 – Apache 2.4.51 – PHP 5.6.40/7.4.26/8.0.13/8.1.0 – MySQL 5.7.36|8.0.27 – MariaDB 10.5.13|10.6.5PhpMyAdmin 4.9.7 & 5.1.1 – [removed] 4.8.1 – PhpSysInfo 3.3.4 – En Option : PHP 7.0.33/7.1.33/7.2.34/7.3.30

[sozzled]

Yes, it's true that isSite() and isAdmin() will cause fatal error problems after updating to J! 4.x—as @pe7er wrote—but these functions have—like the "dinosaurs"—likewise been deprecated since J! 3.8. This discussion is located in the Administration J! 3.x forum. It's reasonable to talk about what could happen if people use deprecated J! 3.x functions in J! 4.x but this discussion is really about updating to PHP 8 and, in that context, the fatal error was caused by a third party image loader content plugin that relied on the outdated "DS" constant.

Anyway, FWIW I agree with @gws and @Webdongle that it's easier to use Wampserver instead of XAMPP to quickly test what happens if you want to see behavioural differences between one version of PHP and another.

[pe7er]

At this point I am not even trying to use Joomla 4.

Sorry, I had Joomla 4 in my mind. For Joomla 3 I recommend to use the default Joomla 3 template Protostar. Just for testing purposes.

When everything (except the template) works ok with PHP 8, then start working on your Joomlashack template.
When the template gives errors, check if the base works ok by disabling the template overrides.
You could disable the template override by renaming the override folder /templates/your-template/html/ to /templates/your-template/html-old/

[ibeeby]

Thanks for the replies.

The actual Joomla version is 3.10.11 - I had checked beforehand and formed the view that that version of Joomla did work with PHP 8.x but maybe that was wrong - helpfully there is a 'select your PHP version' tab available to me.

I have tried downgrading the PHP version to 7.4.33 (the latest pre-8.x version available) but that doesn't make any difference.

I had been hoping that this would be as easy as with the other site - happily working with full admin rights etc under PHP 8.1. If I had encountered any issues with the other (non-critical) site then I would not have embarked on the second install - which was run in exactly the same way as the first.

I accept that I will have to migrate to Joomla 4 - what I did not want to to was to spend the vacation waiting for technical support from the hosting company (which I don't pay for) only to find that there was a simple fix.

[AMurray]

Joomla 3.10 doesn't work with PHP 8.1, only 8.0.x and earlier.

I believe the minimum is still 5.3.10 but the recommended is PHP 8.0 (7.4 is of course now EOL).
https://downloads.joomla.org/technical-requirements

https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

[trenton9]

Did anyone ever find resolution for this problem? I had the same issue and found a fix that worked for me.

Inside Cpanel I noticed something I hadn't previously. There's two PHP 8 options: PHP 8.0 (alt-php80) & PHP 8.0 (ea-php80). I had only noticed and tried one PHP 8 option earlier which was (ea-php80). That one gives me all sorts of errors on the site. The alt-php80 is the one that worked.