Migrating from Sitecore to Drupal

If you have been tasked with migrating a site from Sitecore to Drupal, you might have run into the same problem I did -- a complete lack of all documentation on the subject. There is one module called "sitecore_migrate" which has a Drupal.org page, and has a promising name, but left us with that drooping feeling of disappointment as it holds literally nothing. And I found out why... to make a module that migrates ANYTHING from Sitecore to Drupal automatically is extremely difficult as I found out firsthand. So I believe the guy had high hopes and then realized how impossible it would be. Also floating out there are some very nicely laid out graphics and short paragraphs on how to go about with such a migration, in a VERY general sense. This does not, however, give any technical information about how to go about this as a developer. This is what I will attempt to do here, in hopes that I can save you some time and headache and give an overall contribution to the open-source community. 

Here are the things you will need:

1) A Fresh, blank Drupal site

2) A Sitecore database file (You will have to obtain this from your client)

3) JetBrains DataGrip

4) Database software such as SQL Ace

NOTE: This tutorial assumes a mid-to-senior level developer knowledge. 

Step 1)  - Set up and install your Drupal site and content types. Add the fields that you plan to migrate into. Use good naming conventions! This tutorial will use Lando as the development platform.

Step 2) - Edit your lando (or whatever you're using) to create a blank migration database. For Lando, you would simply add this code to your lando.yml file under "services": 

database:

 portforward: 32441

 config:

  database: config/mysql.cnf

 run_as_root: # Create extra databases.

  - mysql -uroot -e "CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS migrationdb; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON migrationdb.* TO 'drupal10'@'%' IDENTIFIED by 'drupal10';"

Then when you restart your container, it will create this blank database. 

Step 3) Access your blank database with your database software. If using Lando, you can find the connection information with running "lando info".

Step 4) Convert your sitecore database into a mysql (if it is not already) format using JetBrains DataGrip. You can follow the steps in this tutorial to do this!

To be continued... edited 3/10/24