Pathauto bulk update stops working with lots of similar titles and/or transliteration

I recently changed that code, so it's not surprising that it doesn't work as expected.

It doesn't work on a system of "last aliased" nodes - it just selects a limited number each time of un-aliased nodes. In my tests it worked fine. I'll try to test this some more, but if you could try it out on a smaller test site under a variety of conditions that would be really helpful. It might lead to some specific settings that need to be a certain way to get this behavior.

I recently changed that code, so it's not surprising that it doesn't work as expected.

It doesn't work on a system of "last aliased" nodes - it just selects a limited number each time of un-aliased nodes. In my tests it worked fine. I'll try to test this some more, but if you could try it out on a smaller test site under a variety of conditions that would be really helpful. It might lead to some specific settings that need to be a certain way to get this behavior.

I'm not really sure what could be causing this so I'm marking it active (needs more info) since we can't repeat it. What are your update actions, alias and component max length, and the node pattern for this type?

Well, this is certainly an interesting case ;)

Unfortunately it's not specific enough yet for me to be willing to spend time on it so I'm leaving it at "needs more info". If you can get a set of steps to repeat it quickly and consistently then that will go a long ways towards finding the solution. Otherwise we can just wait until someone else runs into this.

As the comment says, it does this to ensure that there is enough space for the sequence number. The sequence number should ensure that the alias is unique. And then pathauto uses the drupal_substr function to reduce the length of the alias by the length of the sequence number. This way if someone has a really large number of nodes that have the same title (like you ;)) then when they have an alias like 'asdf-1234567890' they won't have to worry about it overflowing the length of the dest column in the database or being longer than their max component length.

The question to me is why it keeps trying with 811 even though (presumably) that alias already exists. Why does _pathauto_alias_exists return what seems to be the wrong result... ?

I think this should be fixed now in the .dev build. I used a slight modification since -1 and +1 will balance each other out - right?

Sorry to reopen but the problem is not fixed, even in head.

Here is a description of the problem

Original Code

  // If the alias already exists, generate a new variant
  $separator = variable_get('pathauto_separator', '_');
  if (_pathauto_alias_exists($alias, $src)) {
    for ($i = 0; _pathauto_alias_exists($alias.$separator.$i, $src); $i++) {
    }
    // Make room for the sequence number
    $alias = drupal_substr($alias, 0, $maxlength - 1 -($i/10 + 1));
    $alias = $alias.$separator.$i;
  }

Correct Code

  // If the alias already exists, generate a new variant
  $separator = variable_get('pathauto_separator', '_');
  if (_pathauto_alias_exists($alias, $src)) {
    for ($i = 0; _pathauto_alias_exists(drupal_substr($alias, 0, $maxlength - 1 -($i/10 + 1)).$separator.$i, $src); $i++) {
    }
    // Make room for the sequence number
    $alias = drupal_substr($alias, 0, $maxlength - 1 -($i/10 + 1));
    $alias = $alias.$separator.$i;
  }

The Important part

    for ($i = 0; _pathauto_alias_exists($alias.$separator.$i, $src); $i++) {

    for ($i = 0; _pathauto_alias_exists(drupal_substr($alias, 0, $maxlength - 1 -($i/10 + 1)).$separator.$i, $src); $i++) {

The problem is that the for loop does not respect the maxlenth parameter. This creates a situation were very long urls pass the for loop but fail the actual insertion. It is agravated by the way it fails causes pathauto to claim it did not fail.

Hope that helps.

@antglant - Can you create this as an actual patch file? code in issues is hard to follow.

See http://drupal.org/patch/create for details.

See Attached

@antglant - I just got around to looking at this - sorry for the delay.

Your patch is against the 5.x-1.2 branch of pathauto. This issue is about 5.x-2.x. Can you repeat the problem there? If so then can you update your patch against the 5.x-2.x branch?

Also, please let me know the exact steps to repeat the problem so that

I'd be happy to create a patch against the 5.x-2.x branch. However, I can't figure out how to get to it via CVS. So if you can tell me where to find it in CVS I'll make the patch.

As for duplicating the problem.
It occurs when there are three or more pages with a title that is the identical under the maxlenth parameter.

Consider this simplified case

function pathauto_create_alias($alias, $src, $separator, $maxlength) {

  ...

  // If the alias already exists, generate a new variant
  if (_pathauto_alias_exists($alias, $src)) {
    for ($i = 0; _pathauto_alias_exists($alias.$separator.$i, $src); $i++) {
    }
    // Make room for the sequence number
    $alias = drupal_substr($alias, 0, $maxlength - 1 -($i/10 + 1));
    $alias = $alias.$separator.$i;
  }

  ...

}

pathauto_create_alias("A Page", 1, "", 1);
//This creates path A

pathauto_create_alias("A Second Page", 2, "", 1);
//The for loop thinks this is creating "A Second Page0"
//"A0" is actually created

pathauto_create_alias("A Third Page", 3, "", 1);
//The for loop thinks this is creating "A Third Page0"
//"A0" is what it actually tries to create.  However,
//"A0" already exists so there is a silent failure.  
//Pathauto interpets the silent failure as success.

Ok, here is what I found:

0) basically any pattern will work for this
1) Set "Maximum alias length:" to 1
2) create 3 new nodes with the same title

Expected results:
3rd node gets the alias -1

Actual results:
3rd nodes gets the alias -0 while the second node loses its alias

Is that the problem you describe? If not, please use this format for describing the steps to repeat.

I look forward to the patch - thanks.

I need instructions on how to download 5.2 from CVS to create a patch.




A few minor updates to your description

0) basically any pattern will work for this as long as it is longer than "Maximum alias length:"
1) create 3 new nodes with the same title

Expected results:
3rd node gets the alias -1

Actual results:
3rd node fails to get any alias.

I suppose I should be extra clear.

I created my patch against the CVS head avaliable at http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/contributions/modules/pathauto/. Apparently 5.2 is located elsewhere. Please let me know where so that I can create the patch.

It depends on which cvs client you use - in most you select the "BRANCH" to be "DRUPAL-5--2"

on the command line:

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib co -d pathauto -r DRUPAL-5--2 contributions/modules/pathauto

I've applied this to the 5.x-2 branch. Thanks, antgiant!