We were extremely near to the end of the development of a new website using v4.6.1 / SQL Server and came across a problem with nested Document Types.
Some nesting was just for "documentation" where the parent had no properties and some did have properties to inherit.
At one point the site was working absolutely fine and then the admin site started to have problems when trying to access content pages (Content section). The error was something like "... not set to an instance of ...".
After a lot of trial and error and recreating the site step by step we found that the problem happened if we nested Doc Types. As soon as we removed all nesting the problem went away!
The site has been recreated with a flat Doc Type structure and everything is fine ... no other changes have been made to the content, templates, XSLT, etc.
I am making this post mainly to raise the issue - firstly to possibly help others and also to see if there is a known problem / fix!
First of all, which umbraco version are you using?
I have seen these errors as well, and am still succesfully using nested doctypes. The problem (for me) started after migrating to a new environment and was probably due to me messing with the old dev environment, so I can't reproduce. What does seem to help though, is to right-click the problematic node and publishing them including children (if the second checkbox isn't checked, it does not work). So I just published the whole tree again and everything works. I haven't looked very hard for the source of the problem, so I couldn't tell you what went wrong. Sometimes this also seems to happen after changing doctypes.
In this case, I'm talking about a 4.0.4.2 install.
Suddenly got the same issue on a 4.6.2 site that hade been working ok for a week or so. Another site in the same installation, without nested doc types works fine.
The problem suddenly appeared on reload after I had removed the host name for the affected site. Can be a coincidence of course. I had not made any changes to the doc type hierarchy the last few days.
Upgrading to 4.7rc solved the problem, but then the xslts wouldnt render. That was easily solved deleting a few Razorengine and macroengine-related obsolete dlls according to a post here on the forum.
It was enough of a risk (!?) using 4.6.1 for this very large, soon to be released, project. I can't see anyone being happy to use an RC version unfortunately!
We have reworked the Doc Types and created them without any nesting and so far all seems OK.
I understand that this may not be the best thing to have to do on a large project that is about to go live but maybe it's the way forward. From the latest nightly you should copy over bin, install, umbraco and umbraco_client folders.
It's probably a good idea to test this on a local installation first...
Oh did miss your last line about you have recreated them without nesting. That's also a solution and I don't think you will encounter any more major bugs with this release.
Nested Doc Types causes issues
We were extremely near to the end of the development of a new website using v4.6.1 / SQL Server and came across a problem with nested Document Types.
Some nesting was just for "documentation" where the parent had no properties and some did have properties to inherit.
At one point the site was working absolutely fine and then the admin site started to have problems when trying to access content pages (Content section). The error was something like "... not set to an instance of ...".
After a lot of trial and error and recreating the site step by step we found that the problem happened if we nested Doc Types. As soon as we removed all nesting the problem went away!
The site has been recreated with a flat Doc Type structure and everything is fine ... no other changes have been made to the content, templates, XSLT, etc.
I am making this post mainly to raise the issue - firstly to possibly help others and also to see if there is a known problem / fix!
First of all, which umbraco version are you using?
I have seen these errors as well, and am still succesfully using nested doctypes. The problem (for me) started after migrating to a new environment and was probably due to me messing with the old dev environment, so I can't reproduce. What does seem to help though, is to right-click the problematic node and publishing them including children (if the second checkbox isn't checked, it does not work). So I just published the whole tree again and everything works. I haven't looked very hard for the source of the problem, so I couldn't tell you what went wrong. Sometimes this also seems to happen after changing doctypes.
In this case, I'm talking about a 4.0.4.2 install.
See the following work item on CodePlex, fixed in next release but may be related to you issues?
http://umbraco.codeplex.com/workitem/29889
@Sebastiaan - v4.6.1 as per my orginal message
@Simon - yes, that seems like the bug we have come across, with the solution being what we have done, i.e. make the Doc Types flat rather than nested.
Worringly, I have built a few (3 / 4) websites on 4.6.1 and have used the nested approach on all of them ... !?
Suddenly got the same issue on a 4.6.2 site that hade been working ok for a week or so. Another site in the same installation, without nested doc types works fine.
The problem suddenly appeared on reload after I had removed the host name for the affected site. Can be a coincidence of course. I had not made any changes to the doc type hierarchy the last few days.
Upgrading to 4.7rc solved the problem, but then the xslts wouldnt render. That was easily solved deleting a few Razorengine and macroengine-related obsolete dlls according to a post here on the forum.
It was enough of a risk (!?) using 4.6.1 for this very large, soon to be released, project. I can't see anyone being happy to use an RC version unfortunately!
We have reworked the Doc Types and created them without any nesting and so far all seems OK.
Hi Gordon
I understand your concerns by upgrading to a 4.7 RC...
I had this same issue on a minor site and I fixed it by upgrading to the latest nightly build of 4.6.1 - You can find the nightlies in here http://nightly.umbraco.org/umbraco%204.6/4.6.1/
I understand that this may not be the best thing to have to do on a large project that is about to go live but maybe it's the way forward. From the latest nightly you should copy over bin, install, umbraco and umbraco_client folders.
It's probably a good idea to test this on a local installation first...
Oh did miss your last line about you have recreated them without nesting. That's also a solution and I don't think you will encounter any more major bugs with this release.
Hope this projects turns out well for you.
/Jan
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