DD4T 2.1 Support on Sites 9

Question

DD4T recently released version 2.5 which supports all of the latest Sites 9 features - which is great. However, we're running DD4T 2.1 (Java) with Web 8.5 CM / CD, and because DD4T 2.5 for Sites 9 is not yet supported on the Java version we're hoping to be able to run DD4T 2.1 on Sites 9 CM but leave our CD on 8.5 for now.

Can we run DD4T 2.1, or any of the other versions below DD4T 2.5 on Sites 9 if we don't intend to leverage some of the new features, like regions, until the Java DD4T version catches up?

To be clear, here's what we're proposing:

• Sites 9.0 CM
• Web 8.5 CD
• DD4T 2.1 (TBBs & CD)

I'm assuming this will work because AFAIK we can still run the older TBBs compiled against the 8.5 / 2013 DLLs, but I just wanted to check if there was anything we were overlooking. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can use DD4T 2.1 in combination with Tridion Sites 9.1. You just need to upgrade the POM so that it uses the 9.1 CIL and related third-party libraries. On the CM side you can use the DD4T 2.5 templates, they will work fine with DD4T 2.1 on the CD side.

As you say, you won't be able to use the new functionality, especially regions. But the 2.5 templates have a TBB called 'Convert regions to CT metadata'. It converts a page which has component presentations organized in regions, into a page with a flat list of component presentations. The name of the region is included in each component presentation in the form of template metadata, so you can still write code to organize your content by region in the web application.