Migrate Cake PHP project from v2.5 to v4.4 Strawberry

We have inherited a project that uses the Cake PHP framework, currently written in Cake v2.5

This needs to be updated to the latest version (v4.4 Strawberry) for hopefully obvious reasons.

No functionality needs changing, but we just need to replace the Cake PHP framework with the latest version, so we get all of the latest benefits, stability and security upgrades.

Looking for help with this project please.


The system is a membership database for the British Motorsports Marshals Club.

The whole system is rather old and needs updating to use the latest version of Cake PHP.

Hi @bmmcito

Upgrading CakePHP 2 to CakePHP 4 or even CakePHP 3 is not that easily done because there were quite some major changes in between these versions (like the introduction of PHP namepsaces, the concept of middlewares, a whole different ORM layer and much more)

Therefore I’m sorry but there is no real upgrade path without making major changes to how the app is built.

If you want you can ask CakeDC | CakePHP Upgrade | The minds behind CakePHP which is a commercial upgrade service possibility to take a closer look.

But just so you can get a bit of a feeling when these versions released:

  • CakePHP 2.5.0 was released in May 2014
  • CakePHP 2.10.24 is the last security release which was released in December 2020
  • CakePHP 3.0.0 was released in March 2015
  • CakePHP 3.10.5 is the last security release which was released in January 2023
  • CakePHP 4.0.0 was released in December 2019

And CakePHP 4.4.13 is currently the latest recommended version which was released 3 weeks ago

You see that we try to keep old versions alive as long as possible and give users as much time as possible to prepare and upgrade their apps.