Hi Shannon,

We are indeed creating the routes dynamicly.

We hook into the PageCacheRefresher.CacheUpdated event to clear and recreate our virtual routes.

Dave

Hi Shannon,

I use the same approach like articulate on a other (7.2.5) site and there it works fine. But this site is a 7.3.0 and if you use the same approach I can't get the url of a item. I get at null reference exception when I do item.Url

When we were running on the RC and beta versions we didn't have this issue by the way. It has been reported after we upgraded to 7.3.0 final release

Dave

I'd first disable SEO Checker and see if that changes what you seen in your logs, who knows what that is doing, I've seen some strange issues with that plugin.

You'll also need to provide some more information on exactly what you are doing, code snippets, specific implementation details, etc... The information you have provided is quite minimal.

Hi Shannon,

First let me explain how we setup the content

We have a structure like this

Site
 - nl
 -- Courses
 --- Course 1
 --- Course 2
 - en
 - data
 -- Exercises
 --- Exercise 1
 --- Exercise 2 

We create exercises in the data folder. On each course we can select the exercises that make up the course. So exercises can be used in multiple courses across different languages.

A requirement that is each assigned exercise should have unique url based on the course it is assigned. We solve this using virtual routes.

This is the code of the virtual route handler :

 public class ExerciseNodeHandler : UmbracoVirtualNodeByIdRouteHandler
{
    private readonly int courseId;

    /// <summary>
    /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="CourseNodeHandler"/> class.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="realNodeId">
    /// Real node id.
    /// </param>
    /// <param name="courseId">
    /// Journey chapter id.
    /// </param>
    public CourseNodeHandler(int realNodeId, int courseId)
        : base(realNodeId)
    {
        this.courseId = courseId;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// The find content.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="requestContext">
    /// The request context.
    /// </param>
    /// <param name="umbracoContext">
    /// The umbraco context.
    /// </param>
    /// <param name="baseContent">
    /// The base content.
    /// </param>
    /// <returns>
    /// The <see cref="IPublishedContent"/>.
    /// </returns>
    protected override IPublishedContent FindContent(RequestContext requestContext, UmbracoContext umbracoContext, IPublishedContent baseContent)
    {
        // Store the id of the journey chapter in the RequestCache because we need it in other places.
        var cacheManager = DependencyResolver.Current.GetService<ICacheManager>();
        cacheManager.RequestCache.GetOrSet(Common.Constants.CacheKey.CourseIdForExercise, () => this.courseId);

        return baseContent;
    }
}

This is how we build the virtual routes

var exercises = this.FunctionThatGetsExercises()

foreach(var exercise in exercises)
{
    RouteTable.Routes.MapUmbracoRoute(
        string.Format("{0}-{1}-{2}", Routes.ExerciseRouteKey, exercise.CourseId, exercise.Id), 
        exercise.Url, 
        new
        {
            controller = "ExerciseController", 
            action = exerciseAction
        },
         new ExerciseNodeHandler(exercise.Id, exercise.CourseId));
}

We see that routes get build after (un)publish action. Also the node handler gets hit by when we request the page. But sometimes it returns a 404 which is gone after a while without any content actions.

What I think is strange in the log is the last line here.

2015-10-08 14:33:01,758 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.UmbracoModule - Begin request: http://dev.Demoportal.com/nl/journey-overview/journey-introduction-2/journey-detail-2/journey-chapter-3/vrt-1.
 2015-10-08 14:33:01,760 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindDomain: Uri="http://dev.Demoportal.com/nl/journey-overview/journey-introduction-2/journey-detail-2/journey-chapter-3/vrt-1"
 2015-10-08 14:33:01,761 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindDomain: Matches domain="dev.Demoportal.com/nl", rootId=1144, culture="nl-NL"
 2015-10-08 14:33:01,761 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindDomain: Culture="nl-NL"
 2015-10-08 14:33:01,761 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - HandleWildcardDomains: Path="-1,1143,1164,1165,1322,1323"
 2015-10-08 14:33:01,761 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - HandleWildcardDomains: No match.
 2015-10-08 14:33:01,762 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Core.Sync.DatabaseServerMessenger - Syncing from database...
 2015-10-08 14:33:02,037 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Core.Sync.DatabaseServerMessenger - Complete (took 274ms)
 2015-10-08 14:33:02,555 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindDomain: Uri="http://dev.Demoportal.com/nl/journey-overview/journey-introduction-2/journey-detail-2/journey-chapter-3/vrt-1"
 2015-10-08 14:33:02,556 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindDomain: Matches domain="dev.Demoportal.com/nl", rootId=1144, culture="nl-NL"
 2015-10-08 14:33:02,556 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindDomain: Culture="nl-NL"
 2015-10-08 14:33:02,556 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindPublishedContentAndTemplate: Path="/nl/journey-overview/journey-introduction-2/journey-detail-2/journey-chapter-3/vrt-1"
 2015-10-08 14:33:02,556 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.PublishedContentRequestEngine - FindPublishedContent: Begin finders
 2015-10-08 14:33:02,557 [P19400/D2/T147] DEBUG Umbraco.Web.Routing.ContentFinderByNiceUrl - Test route "1144/journey-overview/journey-introduction-2/journey-detail-2/journey-chapter-3/vrt-1"

Here the first part of the url that is "nl" is suddenly changed to the node id of the nl node.

Dave

Unfortunately I'm not really sure how much I can assist with this without debugging your own code. All I can do is really ask you more questions and provide some suggestions..

• Disable SEO Checker
• Your custom routes will be hit before any of the PublishedContentRequestEngine stuff kicks in, so for your custom routes you shouldn't see any of those logs. These are just MVC routes and Umbraco will ignore trying to route to those paths ... as long as your routes are created in the correct startup phase. Where/When are your routes created?
• When you create your routes based on events, are you clearing the previously made routes?
• Are you ensuring that you are locking the route table before modifying it?
• When you are re-creating your routes based on events, these routes should be placed above Umbraco's catch all route in your route table.

Hi Shannon,

All help is appreciated.

Disabling SEO Checker doesn't have any affect

Routes are created in the ApplicationStarted event. When this happens all routes work as expected. The problems start when we are recreating them

We delete our routes on content change events inside a lock.

 // get a write lock because this can be update while app is running
using (RouteTable.Routes.GetWriteLock())
{
    // Remove existing routes
    this.RemoveExisting(RouteTable.Routes);

    // setup routes for writing
    this.InitExerciseRoutes();         
}

private void RemoveExisting(RouteCollection routes)
{
    this.RemoveExcerciseRoutes(routes);
}

private void RemoveExcerciseRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    this.RemoveRoutesForHandler(routes, typeof(ExerciseNodeHandler));
    this.RemoveRoutesForHandler(routes, typeof(ExerciseSubNodeHandler));
}

private void RemoveRoutesForHandler(RouteCollection routes, Type handlerType)
{
    var handlerRoutes =
        routes.OfType<Route>().Where(x => x.RouteHandler.GetType() == handlerType).ToArray();

        foreach (var route in handlerRoutes)
        {
            routes.Remove(route);
        }
}

When you are re-creating your routes based on events, these routes should be placed above Umbraco's catch all route in your route table.

How do we do this ?

Dave

Hi Shannon,

I have been debugging this against the umbraco source.

I narrowed the issue down to this part of the code in UmbracoModule.ProcessRequest

// do not process if this request is not a front-end routable page
            var isRoutableAttempt = EnsureUmbracoRoutablePage(umbracoContext, httpContext);
            //raise event here
            OnRouteAttempt(new RoutableAttemptEventArgs(isRoutableAttempt.Result, umbracoContext, httpContext));
            if (!isRoutableAttempt.Success)
            {
                return;
            }

When we see our 404 isRoutableAttempt returns succes. When we don't end up on 404 this is false.

I think it comes down to this method : GlobalSettings.IsReservedPathOrUrl

 public static bool IsReservedPathOrUrl(string url, HttpContextBase httpContext, RouteCollection routes)
        {
            if (httpContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("httpContext");
            if (routes == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("routes");

            //check if the current request matches a route, if so then it is reserved.
            var route = routes.GetRouteData(httpContext);
            if (route != null)
                return true;

            //continue with the standard ignore routine
            return IsReservedPathOrUrl(url);
        }

For some reason Umbraco doesn't see it as a reserved path yet when we have a 404.

Dave

The last route in our route table before we set our routes is one created by nuPickers.

Dave

Yes, when you create your routes on startup, it will be before Umbraco adds the catch all route = ok. Then you use an event to delete your routes and re-add them... these get added to the end of the table, after the Umbraco catch all route. You'll want to insert them before that entry.

Hi Shannon,

Changed my code to create the routes to this :

 var route = new Route(
                            exerciseUrl, 
                            new RouteValueDictionary(new
                                                         {
                                                             name = string.Format("{0}-{1}-{2}", Routes.ExerciseRouteKey, exercise.CourseId, exercise.Id), 
                                                             controller = "ExerciseController", 
                                                             action = exerciseAction
                                                         }), 
                            new ExerciseNodeHandler(exercise.Id, exercise.CourseId));

                        RouteTable.Routes.Insert(0, route);

This seems to fix the problem. Let me update some code and deploy it to our load balanced environment and see if it get's fixed there as well.

Dave

Hi Shannon,

It seems to issue still exists even when I insert the routes in the beginning of the route table.

Debugger still shows that Umbraco doesn't see it as a reserved path and the normal pipeline is executed...which results in a 404

Dave

I'll try to replicate this, have added an issue: http://issues.umbraco.org/issue/U4-7230