I have a pipeline processor in the publishItem pipline that checks for a specific condition on a certain type if item. It’s been working fine for a while, but I recently just started seeing site publishes failing because of a null reference error.
In my code and found that my item object is null. This is how I get the item in the processor:
Item sourceItem = context.PublishHelper.GetSourceItem(context.ItemId);
I’m not checking if sourceItem is null, so it was a bug, which I fixed by checking for null before moving on. This solved the errors.
However, I’m confused as to how this could be. context.ItemId has a GUID, but GetSourceItem is returning null. If I search in Sitecore for the GUID I get no results. How can Sitecore be trying to publish an Item that doesn’t exist?
This is on a dev server and around this time, we were building some new templates and had created and deleted several templates, so I wonder if these items were ones that got deleted.
Related
I'm stuck with this problem on Master Data Service (MDS).
I have an entity that has two domain based to other two entities.
I created the first business rule with the first domain based and it works perfectly.
But when I try to create a second business rule with the second domain based, an error appears:
200095 : Cannot specify more than one entity in MetadataGet
400003 : The attribute reference is not valid. The attribute was not found.
400003 : The attribute reference is not valid. The attribute was not found.
Obviously the attribute is valid. In fact, if I delete the first business rules, the second one is published correctly.
I think that MDS block a second business rules if you try to apply to a second domain based attribute.
This happened to us as well, and it seems that this error only occurs if a specific set of actions is taken:
We first restored the MDS 2012 database on SQL Server 2017
We upgraded a database using MDS management tool. Mind that the multi-entity business rules work fine now - they return no errors upon saving, can be published and successfully evalueted
We then realized that we are missing some code changes, so we decided to create a full model package using MDSModelDeploy.exe in our old MDS 2012
We deployed that package using MDSModelDeploy deployupdate command. After that the existing multi-entity rules are failing to publish, you are also unable to create new rules based on different entities within one entity. Unfortunately, we have found no fix for it, as there are simpler ways around it.
At this point we took a step back, restored and upgraded the old database once again, and it turned out that the rules worked, so it got to be the package that has broken those. I do not know what your situation was, since when we created a fresh model in SQL 2017 all of the multi-entity based rules worked perfectly, so I am curious to know what steps should be taken to reproduce the error in your case.
The only possible approach I can think of to fix the situation in point 4, would be to create an MDSModelDeploy update package from the corrupted model and another one from a new, healthy model, and then compare how the XMLs of the multi-entity business rules are structured. We did not try this one though, since we found the workaround described previously.
We have a very weird issue in our Siebel 7.8 application.
In the Application_Start event we define a bunch of profile attributes, which determine if the logged user will be allowed to perform certain operations or not. The code is something like this:
if (userHasSuperpowers) {
TheApplication().SetProfileAttr("CanFly", "Y");
} else {
// CanFly is not set, and GetProfileAttr("CanFly") returns ''
}
Everything works fine, except for one of these profile attributes. The conditions are not met, so we don't set its value. But when we check it using GetProfileAttr... it returns 'Y' instead of ''.
I've checked the code. A lot. I've put traces everywhere, and I'm 100% sure that when the last line of the Application_Start event executes, the attribute is still empty. However, in the first Applet_Load event after the login (in the HLS Salutation Applet (HLS Home) applet), its value has already changed to 'Y'. Why!!? I've looked everywhere, but I can't find anywhere else where we'd be doing a SetProfileAttr. So far, I've ruled out:
Every browser and server script for all our applets, application, BCs and business services.
All the runtime business services (the ones defined directly in the application instead of the SRF).
The Personalization Profile business component fields.
SmartScripts (not that they would matter in this particular scenario, I just mention them to acknowledge that you can set profile attributes there too).
Workflows: every step invoking the SIS OM PMT Service method Set Profile Attribute.
Siebel magically setting its value. The profile attribute name is custom made, in Spanish, and it contains our project name and a row_id. I really don't think Siebel is using the same name for its own profile attributes :).
But wait, there is more, I left the best part for last: the problem only happens in our development environment!
It's not an SRF issue: if we promote the same SRF to our testing or production environments, it works and returns the expected value.
It's not a data problem: still with the same SRF, I can use my local thick client, connecting to our development database with the same login and password, and it works fine too.
It's not a concurrency problem: we are testing with only one user logged in. And even if we had more, they wouldn't share sessions. And even if they did, the value wouldn't be always 'Y'.
It's not a temporary glitch, or something due to a wrong incremental compilation or a corrupted SRF: we have been experiencing this for at least 6 months (obviously, in that time frame, we've had dozens of different SRF files... all of them having the same problem, but only in development, and only if you use the server and not the dedicated client... seriously...).
Where else could I search the profile attribute being set? I've read that they can be persisted to the DB, but in order to do so, you have to define them as a field in a BC based on an S_PARTY extension table, right?
Is there any way to trace profile attribute changes somehow? Maybe rising some loglevel?
How can I find out at least what's being executed after the Application_Start, before loading the first applet?
Any other ideas? I tried checking the SQL spool file too, but didn't find anything suspicious there either (i.e., any of the queries we use to check the conditions, being run twice with different parameters).
Update: following Ranjith R's suggestions, I've also checked:
Other vanilla business services which could be also invoked from a workflow to set a profile attr: User Registration > SetProfileAttr, SessionAccessService > SetProfileAttr and ISS Promotion Agreement Manager > SetProfileAttributes.
Runtime events setting profile attributes directly or using a business service (we don't have any runtime events apart from the vanilla ones).
Business services being called from DVMs (we only have vanilla data validation rules, and none of them apply to our buscomps).
Still no luck...
Ok... finally we found what's happening:
We access the URL to our server and get to the login page. This triggers a first Application_Start event, for the SADMIN user.
We set the profile attributes in that session. SADMIN is the Siebel administrator user, so yes, he hasSuperpowers and therefore we do TheApplication().SetProfileAttr("CanFly", "Y");.
The Application_Start event finishes.
We enter our username and password in the login screen to access into Siebel. This triggers a second Application_Start event, this time for our user. This is the one I was monitoring with the trace files.
We set the profile attributes again in the new session. Our user doesn't hasSuperpowers, so we don't set any value for the CanFly attribute.
The Application_Start event finishes, and CanFly is still empty.
Siebel merges both sessions into one before loading the first screen!! Or at least, it transfers over the profile attributes we had set for SADMIN.
I'm sure it happens that way, for two reasons. First, we changed the profile attribute name to include the username too. And second, instead of storing just an "Y", we are storing now the current date:
var time = (new Date()).getTime();
TheApplication().SetProfileAttr("CanFly_" + TheApplication().LoginName(), time);
We end up having CanFly_SADMIN, but no CanFly_USER, and the time value stored is the same we see in the log file for step 2... which is smaller than any of the values for the *_USER attributes.
So that's what happening. I still don't know why Siebel behaves this way, but that would be matter for another question. According to the Siebel bookshelf:
The Start event is called when the client starts and again when the user interface is first displayed.
...but it doesn't say anythign about it being called from two different sessions, different users too, and then merging them together. It must be something misconfigured in our dev environment, considering it doesn't happen in the other ones.
Does Siebel 7.8 have runtime Events? I can't recall. Runtime events have an action set for setevent, which can set/clear profile attributes.
There are still other vanilla business services which can set profile attributes, try searching in tools flat under business service methods for *rofile*tt*.
The SIS OM service can also be invoked from DVMs for from RunTime events directly, so thats also a possibility.
There is no logging system to see values of Profile Attributes changing, testing is the only way out.
I have a problem deleting documents from Amazon CloudSearch.
When I send document for deletion I receive response
{"status": "success", "adds": 0, "deletes": 5}
And then the video stays in the index with all fields reset to their default values and not deleted.
The documentation is not clear if this is the normal behaviour or a bug.
Any one else experienced this?
This surprised me too but appears to be normal behavior. The 'deleted' documents aren't searchable anymore since their fields are all null so they shouldn't cause any problems.
The problem I have with this is that they can be returned if you search for something like "-zomgwtfbbq", since they don't contain the term "zomgwtfbbq".
It is also confusing since it makes your dashboard show one count (the "searchable" documents) but if you run a test search for -zomgwtfbbq (what I have been using as a proxy for "get all documents"), you get a different number. Took me a while to figure out why.
Despite what they say about setting the version to max uint32 "permanently removing" the document, it will still be there. The problem is that they consider these documents unsearchable, but they're not.
Are you specifying the version number when you delete the document?
When deleting documents, note that deleting version max(uint32_t) will permanently remove the document from your domain. Because it is not possible to specify a higher version number, there is no way to add a later version of the document.
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/latest/developerguide/versioning.html
When a new record is created using Ember Data, then get("isDirty") returns true. But as yet, the user has made no changes to the record, and we can discard it without losing any of the user's work.
Is there any official, supported way to detect this situation, where a record has been created but no properties have been set?
(There's in incomplete answer to this question for a much older version of Ember Data, before it was substantially overhauled. The didSetProperty function still exists in current releases, but it's undocumented. Still, it might be a possible path to a solution if nothing official can be found.)
Internally, the changed properties are tracked by the _attributes property. You could do a check of
record.get('isNew') && Ember.keys(record._attributes).length === 0
to see that it has just been created and nothing has been changed on it.
Note that this is not meant to be part of the external API, but I'm not aware of any external API to accomplish this.
we are experiencing some very odd errors in our installation.
Some times out of nowhere Sitecore throws an error:
Assert: Value Cannot be null. Parameter: Item.
The closest i have come to identifying the problem is narrowing it down to either an index or the web database.
Anyway, if I log into sitecore the Item is just missing, i can fix it in 3 ways:
Rebuild the index.
Recycle app pool
iisreset
Does any of you have an idea why this might be happening? We are running Sitecore.NET 6.5.0 (rev. 120706). Any help will be deeply appreciated.
You are describing a system stability issue, so I recommend opening a ticket with Sitecore support (http://support.sitecore.net). This sort of issue is difficult to troubleshoot over Stack Overflow, since we do not have access to your logs and configuration.
When opening the ticket, I recommend using the Support Package Generator which bundles up all the information (Web.config, App_Config files, IIS settings, Sitecore log files) that Sitecore Support needs to troubleshoot the issue. It's a pretty nifty tool.
That said, from what you describe, it sounds like the issue is related to caching. The fact that restarting IIS resolves the issue indicates that the item is in the Web database, but the runtime doesn't see it. You can prove out whether this is the issue by clearing cache using the /sitecore/admin/cache.aspx screen. If your cache is not getting updated properly, you should review your configuration against the guidelines in the SDN Scaling Guide.
Based on knowing you're using the Advanced Database Crawler, your issue may be how you're converting a SkinnyItem to an Item. I've had this issue before. If you look at the SkinnyItem.cs class, there's a GetItem() method to convert it into an Item. You can see it uses the database to get the item by its ID, language, and version number. Its possible that when you publish from master to web, you are publishing a new version # of an existing item and thus the new version exists in the web DB, but the index is not updated and references the old version. So, this GetItem() call would use the previous version # and the item would be null. One way to fix this is instead of calling that GetItem() method, just use your own code to get the latest version of that item from Sitecore, e.g.
Item item = Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(someSkinnyItem.ItemID);
Instead of
Item item = someSkinnyItem.GetItem();
Here's an example flow:
Foo item created in master DB as version 1.
Publish Foo to web
Index will pick up version 1 in web DB and put in index.
Any querying code against index will convert the SkinnyItem to an Item via that GetItem() method and will pass 1 as the version #.
Page will load, no error in log
Back in master, create version 2 of Foo and publish.
Index may not get updated right away or even if configured wrong.
Code that looks against index will call GetItem() and still call with version 1 since that's in the index
But when you published, web no longer has version 1, it now has version 2, and thus that specific version of that item Foo is null
Error shows in log
On a similar note, here's a blog post by Alex Shyba (creator of the ADC) on how to sync HTML cache clearing with the index updates. That may help.