se7enxweb / expchangeclass

v1.0.0 2026-09-13 10:25 UTC

Requires

• php: ^8.1 || ^8.2 || ^8.3 || ^8.4

GPL-2.0-or-later

• 7x
• Bartek Modzelewski

• migration
• conversion
• exponential
• Exponential Legacy
• content class
• changeclass

Published on Packagist.org on 2026-09-13 10:51 UTC

README

Change an existing content object's content class, mapping each attribute of the old class onto one of the new. Works on one object from the administration interface, or on every object of a class from the command line.

For Exponential Legacy / Exponential 6 on PHP 8.

Why this fork exists

This is a fork of eZChangeclass by Bartek Modzelewski. Two forks of it were in circulation and neither was safe to run here.

The Netgen fork keeps the original PHP 4 shape: conversionFunctions declares a conversionFunctions() constructor and non-static customConverter() and convertObject(), while the module calls them as conversionFunctions::convertObject(...). PHP removed PHP 4 constructors in version 8 and made a static call to a non-static method fatal, so that fork stops at the line that does the work:

Error: Non-static method conversionFunctions::customConverter()
       cannot be called statically

The OpenContent fork fixed that and added guards, but carried its own faults: a conversion that failed part way through was never rolled back, and the batch script could not terminate if an object refused to convert.

This fork takes the OpenContent code as its base, takes the attribute pre-selection and packaging from the Netgen fork, and fixes what neither had.

What it fixes

Nothing is left half converted

A conversion rewrites attributes across every version and every language of an object. The predecessors opened a transaction, and then on any problem either called die() from inside the attribute loop or threw from inside it. Neither rolled back. The request ended with some attributes moved to the new class and the rest still on the old one, and the object's own contentclass_id was changed after the commit, so a failure there left attributes of the new class on an object still declaring the old.

Everything that touches content now runs inside one transaction, including the class change, and rolls back as a unit. convertObject() returns false with a message instead of ending the request:

$error = null;
if ( !conversionFunctions::convertObject( $objectID, $classID, $mapping, $error ) )
{
    // content is exactly as it was
}

The mapping is validated before anything is written

A mapping naming an attribute that neither class has used to surface as a fatal part way through the rewrite, with earlier attributes already stored. The whole mapping is checked against both class data maps first, so a bad mapping is refused while the content is still untouched.

The batch script terminates

classconvert.php paged through objects with 'offset' => 0 hardcoded. That works only because a converted object stops matching the class filter and drops out of the next page. An object that fails to convert keeps matching, so the same page was fetched, failed, and fetched again forever. The window now steps over failures, and a batch in which nothing converted stops the run.

Text is escaped before it becomes XML

The text-to-ezxmltext converter built its markup by substituting the raw field value into a string. Any content holding & or < — "Tom & Jerry", "a < b", a pasted HTML fragment — produced XML the parser rejected or silently reinterpreted, losing part of the field. The value is escaped, and a parse failure is reported rather than stored as an empty field.

The relation-list converter runs at all

It used eZXML::domTree() and get_elements_by_tagname(), the PHP 4 XML wrapper the kernel dropped long ago. Rewritten on DOMDocument.

ezstring to ezxmltext is reachable

changeclass.ini declared [ezstring] twice. A repeated group does not merge — the second occurrence wins — so the destinations named in the first were unreachable and ezstring to ezxmltext silently did not exist. There is one group per source datatype now, dispatching on the destination.

The result is reported

convertObject()'s return value was discarded, so a refused conversion rendered the same success page as a real one. The page now states plainly whether the content changed, and why not.

Conversion is a policy

The module declared no functions, so the only possible grant was all-or-nothing on the module. There is a changeclass/convert policy function on all three views.

Attribute pre-selection

Taken from the Netgen fork: the mapping form pre-selects the source attribute whose identifier matches the destination, instead of always defaulting to the first attribute in the list.

Installing

composer require se7enxweb/expchangeclass

Then enable it in site.ini:

[ExtensionSettings]
ActiveExtensions[]=expchangeclass

Clear the caches as the web server user — running ezcache.php as root prints a warning and exits without clearing anything:

sudo -u www-data php bin/php/ezcache.php --clear-all

Grant the changeclass/convert policy to the roles that should be allowed to convert content.

Using it

See doc/USAGE.md.

Before you run it

Conversion rewrites published content in place, across every version and language. It is not undo-able from the interface. Take a database backup first, and try it on one object before a batch.

Licence

GNU General Public License v2.0 or later. Original work copyright (C) 2007 Bartek Modzelewski.