How to Upgrade DD4T 1.31 to DD4T 2.0 (asp.net)

Question

I have few question regarding DD4T Upgrade. Below is my current environment

CMS : SDL Tridion 2013 SP1,

DD4T : 1.31 (asp.net)

Server language : Asp.net MVC4

1. I want to know, can I upgrade my DD4T 1.31 to DD4T 2.0 without upgrading Tridion 2013 SP1 to SDL Web. If it is possible, then what are the breaking changes which I should be aware of ?
2. Are there any blogs or guides available with the upgrade path for DD4T 1.31 to DD4T 2.0?

Answer 1

DD4T2.0's CD side is backwards compatible with DD4T 1.x

This is designed specifically for upgrade scenarios where customers may have thousands of DCPs and Pages published using DD4T 1.x's XML structure and can't easily republish the entire site as part of the upgrade.

What I mean is, the new framework is still able to deserialize XMLs published by the old framework.

So, you would need to upgrade:

1. on the CM, for every template switch out the old DD4T TBBs with new ones - if you want to do the CM.
2. on the CD, replace old dd4t DLLs with new ones.
3. look at how the web.config settings map from old to new, particularly around cache configurations. DD4T2.0 has a newly added mechanism, but should still have the old one.
4. recompile your app against the new framework. If you run into errors due to API difference, post them here as separate questions. Otherwise, do some regression testing on your app and you should be good to go.

Answer 2

Regarding the blogs and guide for upgrade from DD4T 1.31 to DD4T 2.0, I have written a series of blogs and blow are the links for the same:

• DD4T 1.31 to DD4T 2.0 - Overview
• DD4T 1.31 to DD4T 2.0 - CD Side

I hope these may be helpful to someone.