Migrating from v1 to v2

Looking for the v1 docs? Find them here.

This document is a work in progress. Have you run into something that’s not covered here? Add your changes on GitHub!

Introduction

This is a reference for upgrading your site from Gatsby v1 to Gatsby v2. While there’s a lot covered here, you won’t need to do everything for your site. We’ll do our best to keep things easy to follow, and as sequential as possible so you can get rocking on v2!

If you want to start fresh, check out the starting a new project section

Why you should migrate

This documentation page covers the how of migrating from v1 to v2. Various blog posts cover the why:

v2 Overview by Kyle Mathews
Improving accessibility by Amberley Romo
Keeping Gatsby sites blazing fast by Dustin Schau

Updating Your Dependencies

First, you need to update your dependencies and install any needed peer dependencies.

Update Gatsby version

You need to update your package.json to use the latest version of Gatsby.

Or run

Update your package.json to use the latest versions of Gatsby related packages. You should upgrade any package name that starts with gatsby-. Note, this only applies to plugins managed in the gatsbyjs/gatsby repo. If you’re using community plugins, they might not be upgraded yet. Check their repo for the status. Many plugins won’t need upgrading so they very well might keep working. You can run

And compare “Wanted” and “Latest” versions and update package.json file manually or run

NOTE: The above command is only an example - adjust packages to ones you are using.

Install React

In v1, the react and react-dom packages were a part of the gatsby package. They are now peerDependencies in v2, so you need to install them into your project.

Install plugins’ peer dependencies

Some plugins had dependencies that were also made peerDependencies. For example, if you use gatsby-plugin-typography, you now need to install:

You should search for the plugins that you use in the plugin library. Then, check their installation instructions for extra packages that may need installation.

Handling Breaking Changes

Remove or refactor layout components

Gatsby’s layout components (src/layouts/index.js) are gone now. The “top-level component” is now the page itself. If the layout of your site looks broken, this is likely the reason why.

There are some implications to this change:

Rendering different layouts for different pages is different. Use the standard React inheritance model. Gatsby no longer maintains, or needs to maintain, separate behavior for handling layouts.
Because the “top-level component” changes between each page, React will rerender all children. This means that shared components previously in a Gatsby v1 layout— like navigations— will unmount and remount. This will break CSS transitions or React state within those shared components. If your use case requires a layout component to not unmount use gatsby-plugin-layout.
To learn more about the decision behind this removal, read the RFC for removing the special layout component.

We recommend the following migration path:

1. Convert the layout’s children from a render prop to a normal prop (required)

In v1, the children prop passed to the layout was a function (render prop) and needed to be executed. In v2, this is no longer the case.

2. Move `layouts/index.js` to `src/components/layout.js` (optional, but recommended)

3. Import and wrap pages with the layout component

Adhering to the normal React composition model, import your layout component, and use it to wrap the content of the page.

Repeat for every page and template that needs this layout.

4. Pass `history`, `location`, and `match` props to layout

In v1, the layout component had access to history, location, and match props. In v2, only pages have access to these props. If you need these props in the layout component, pass them through from the page.

5. Change the query to use `StaticQuery`

If you were using the data prop in your Gatsby v1 layout, you now need to use Gatsby v2’s StaticQuery feature. This is because a layout is now a normal component.

Replacing a layout’s query with StaticQuery:

Change `navigateTo` to `navigate`

The navigateTo method in gatsby-link was renamed to navigate to mirror the API used by @reach/router.

In addition to the name change, gatsby-link is now exported from the gatsby package and can’t be installed directly.

Convert to either pure CommonJS or pure ES6

Gatsby v2 uses webpack 4 which is stricter about modules with mixed module systems.

All ES6 is GOOD:

All CommonJS is GOOD:

Mixing requires and export is BAD:

Mixing import and module.exports is BAD:

Move Babel Configuration

The latest version of Gatsby uses Babel 7. Babel 7 introduced a new behavior for configuration lookup / resolution. In the case where a .babelrc file might be used at the root of the project (like for configuring Jest), moving that Babel configuration into jest.config.json will avoid any conflicts.

This GitHub comment documents the steps needed to do that.

More information on Gatsby and Babel configuration available here.

Restore v1 PostCSS Plugin Setup

Gatsby v2 removed postcss-cssnext and postcss-import from the default PostCSS setup.

Use gatsby-plugin-postcss to have the same configuration that you had in v1.

1. Install the dependencies

npm install gatsby-plugin-postcss postcss-import postcss-cssnext postcss-browser-reporter postcss-reporter

NOTE: postcss-cssnext is deprecated and it is better to use postcss-preset-env.

2. Include `gatsby-plugin-postcss` in your `gatsby-config.js` file

3. Include PostCSS plugins in your `postcss.config.js` file

Migrate from React Router to @reach/router

We switched our router from React Router v4 to @reach/router as @reach/router is smaller and has 1st class support for accessibility.

The founder of React Router, Ryan Florence is also the founder of @reach/router.

He says @reach/router restores things he misses from React Router v3. @reach/router also retains the best parts of React Router v4 and adds full accessibility support.

For most sites, this change won’t cause any breaking changes as the two routers are very similar.

Two common ways this change might break your site is:

You use the object form of the to prop in the <Link> component
You have client-side routes

Read more about the features of our new router at https://reach.tech/router

NOTE: One prominent feature of @reach/router, relative routes, isn’t working currently in Gatsby. We’re working with Ryan Florence on hopefully supporting it soon.

Read on for instructions on migrating your site to @reach/router.

Only string `to` allowed

React Router allowed you to pass objects to the to prop e.g.

React Router would then concatenate the object values together into the full pathname e.g. /about/?fun=true&pizza=false#people.

Now you’ll need to concatenate together the full pathname yourself.

Pass state to the `state` prop

Before with React Router to pass state to a link, you would pass it as part of a to object prop.

Now, to add state to a link, pass it via a state prop.

A `history` prop is no longer passed to page components

React Router would pass a history prop to components that you could use to navigate.

If you need to do programmatic navigation, import @reach/router’s navigate function instead.

The following props are no longer available on `<Link>`

exact
strict
location

exact and strict are no longer necessary as @reach/router does matching this way by default.

You could pass location before to manually compute whether the link is active or not. For advanced link stylings, use getProps now.

Use `getProps` for advanced link styling

Gatsby’s <Link> component supports out-of-the-box activeClassName and activeStyle.

If you have more advanced styling needs, use the getProps prop.

Change client paths to use a splat

When creating a client route in gatsby-node.js, use a * to select all child routes instead of :path.

Migrating React Router client routes to @reach/router

Use <Location> instead of withRouter
import { navigate } from @reach/router for programmatic navigation instead of the history object
There’s no Route component anymore. You can add a <Router> component (a site can have as many routers as it wishes). Then ensure the immediate children of <Router> have a prop named path.

A basic example of the <Router> component:

Here’s a more complex example of migrating a <PrivateRoute> component (used in store.gatsbyjs.org) from React Router to @reach/router.

Here are links to diffs for three sites with client routes upgraded to @reach/router:

APIs `onPreRouteUpdate` and `onRouteUpdate` no longer called with the route update action

React Router v4 would tell us the “action” (push/replace) that triggered the route transition. We passed this as one of the arguments along with location to plugins. @reach/router doesn’t support this so we’ve removed it from the API calls.

Browser API `replaceRouterComponent` was removed

@reach/router doesn’t allow you to swap out its history object like React Router. An API, replaceRouterComponent, was used with React Router for this behavior in Gatsby. This is now no longer needed, so we’ve removed this API.

We did, erroneously, suggest using this API for adding support for Redux, etc. where you need to wrap the root Gatsby component with your component.

If you were using replaceRouterComponent for this, you’ll need to migrate to wrapRootElement:

Browser API `replaceHistory` was removed

Like with replaceRouterComponent, we no longer support custom histories. That is why we’ve also removed the replaceHistory API. The replaceHistory() method was used for tracking page views by registering listeners on route changes using history.listen().

Now, to track page views, you can use the onRouteUpdate API to track pages changes.

Browser API `wrapRootComponent` was replaced with `wrapRootElement`

Use new wrapRootElement API: We now pass component Element instead of Root Component and expect that wrapRootElement will return Element and not Component. This change was needed to keep all wrapping APIs uniform.

Don’t query nodes by ID

Source and transformer plugins now use UUIDs for IDs. If you used glob or regex to query nodes by id then you’ll need to query something else.

Here’s an example querying an image:

See the Pull Request that implemented this change

Use `Query` in place of `RootQueryType`

We changed the GraphQL root type from RootQueryType to Query. This is only likely to impact you if you have top-level fragments in your GraphQL queries:

Typography.js Plugin Config Changes

If you use gatsby-plugin-typography, you now need to explicitly export scale and rhythm as named exports from your typography config module.

Update CSS Modules class names that use dashes

If you use CSS Modules and have class names with dashes in them, you’ll need to change how you access the class names from JavaScript.

This is because the camelCase option for CSS Modules has been changed from false to dashesOnly.

Here’s an example with a class named .my-class-name:

The Gatsby v1 behavior can be restored by adjusting CSS Loader options.

For vanilla CSS without a preprocessor:

If you’re using a preprocessor, you can pass in CSS Loader options when configuring gatsby-plugin-sass or gatsby-plugin-less:

Update Jest configuration

If you were using Jest with Gatsby V1, you will need to make some updates to your configuration when upgrading to Gatsby V2. You can view the complete details of setting up your test environment on the Unit Testing page of the docs.

gatsby-image’s `outerWrapperClassName` was removed

Because the outer wrapper div was removed, you can no longer use the outerWrapperClassName prop for styling your images. You should merge those styles into your wrapper’s class.

If you have created any CSS styling rules referencing the gatsby-image-outer-wrapper class, you should merge those styles into the gatsby-image-wrapper class.

Resolving Deprecations

Import Link from Gatsby

All components and utility functions from gatsby-link are now exported from the gatsby package. So, you should import it directly from gatsby.

Furthermore, you can remove the package from the package.json.

Import GraphQL from Gatsby

The graphql tag function that Gatsby v1 auto-supports is deprecated in v2. Gatsby will throw deprecation warning unless you explicitly import it from the gatsby package.

There is a codemod that can automatically make this change to your projects. Check out the gatsby-codemods package for usage instructions.

Note that if you are relying on the auto-import feature of WebStorm or VSCode, it may import graphql from 'graphql' instead of 'gatsby'. This will throw a bunch of errors around bad imports. Make sure graphql is always imported from gatsby.

Rename `boundActionCreators` to `actions`

boundActionCreators is deprecated in v2. You can continue using it, but it’s recommended that you rename it to actions.

Rename `pathContext` to `pageContext`

Like boundActionCreators above, pathContext is deprecated in favor of pageContext.

Rename responsive image queries

The sizes and resolutions queries are deprecated in v2. These queries have been renamed to fluid and fixed to make them easier to understand. You can continue using the deprecated query names, but it’s recommended that you update them.

Update image query and fragment names:

You can find further examples in the Gatsby Image docs.

Delete Nodes API Deprecated

deleteNodes is now deprecated, so instead you should write nodes.forEach(n => deleteNode({ node: n }))

Other Changes Worth Noting

Explicit query names no longer required

Gatsby v2 doesn’t need explicit query names. You can skip them now:

You can also skip the query keyword if you don’t use query variables:

This isn’t a breaking change. Queries with explicit names will continue to work as they did in v1.

Remove inlined CSS in `html.js`

Gatsby v2 will automatically inline your CSS. You can remove any custom CSS inlining from your custom html.js. Unless you used it for anything else specifically, you can also remove html.js itself.

See an example in this PR that upgrades the using-remark site to Gatsby v2.

Remove explicit polyfills

If your Gatsby v1 site included any polyfills, you can remove them. Gatsby v2 ships with Babel 7 and is configured to automatically include polyfills for your code. See Gatsby’s Babel docs for more details.

For Plugin Maintainers

In most cases you won’t have to do anything to be v2 compatible, but there are a few things you can do to be certain your plugin will work well with v2 sites.

Setting the Proper Peer Dependencies

gatsby should be included under peerDependencies of your plugin and it should specify the proper versions of support.

Change `modifyBabelrc` to `onCreateBabelConfig`

We renamed modifyBabelrc to onCreateBabelConfig to bring it in line with the rest of Gatsby’s API names.

Use onCreateBabelConfig:

Note usage of the new setBabelPlugin action.

See Gatsby’s Babel docs for more details about configuring Babel.

Change `modifyWebpackConfig` to `onCreateWebpackConfig`

We renamed modifyWebpackConfig to onCreateWebpackConfig to bring it in line with the rest of Gatsby’s API names.

Use onCreateWebpackConfig:

Note usage of the new setWebpackConfig action.

See Gatsby’s webpack docs for more details about configuring webpack.

createRemoteFileNode

The signature for using createRemoteFileNode changed in v2, it now expects a new parameter createNodeId.

See docs for createRemoteFileNode

Only allow defined keys on the node internal object

The node internal object isn’t meant for adding node data. While Gatsby v1 allows this behavior we now validate against it for v2. Node data should be added as fields on the top-level node object.

Check the Node interface docs for allowed fields.

Import `graphql` types from `gatsby/graphql`

Import GraphQL types from gatsby/graphql to prevent Schema must contain unique named types but contains multiple types named "<typename>" errors. gatsby/graphql exports all builtin GraphQL types as well as graphQLJSON type.

Add `gatsby-plugin-flow` if you are using Flowtype

We removed @babel/preset-flow from Gatsby’s default Babel configuration to make it easier to allow users to choose their own transpiler. If your site has its own .babelrc that already includes the Flow preset, no changes are necessary. Otherwise, you should install gatsby-plugin-flow.

For Explorers

Starting a New Project with v2

Here’s a brief section on starting a new project with Gatsby v2 instead of upgrading an existing project.

Start from scratch: If you’re a start from scratch kind of person, you can install Gatsby and React like this: npm install gatsby react react-dom

Tutorial: If you’d like a step-by-step guide, follow the tutorial to get started with Gatsby v2.

Starters: If you’d rather use one of the official starters, install your favorite one with the Gatsby CLI.

gatsby-starter-default with v2:

gatsby-starter-hello-world with v2:

gatsby-starter-blog with v2:

Start building today on Netlify!

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