Deleting content type results in fatal error.

I just ran into this myself. It is caused by the fact that when you delete a content type that has fields associated with it, the content module in turn deletes all those fields. The method responsible for deleting the fields from the {content_node_field_instance} table (content_field_instance_delete() in includes/content.crud.inc) does a whole bunch of schema altering, menu rebuilding and cache clearing stuff after deleting each field which causes a substantial delay (like 6 or 7 seconds on my box).

If only one field is getting deleted, like might be the case when you remove a particular field from a content type through the admin/content/types interface, this is fine. But if you're deleting the whole content type, performing these rebuilding/cache clearing actions on each and every field is clearly a waste. In particular, the content_field_instance_delete() method is calling content_clear_type_cache(TRUE) which forces drupal to rebuild the entire database schema for all tables, not just cck related tables. For a content type with more than a few fields, you can easily hit the default 30 second php execution limit.

I would probably argue that these admin functions should be entirely removed from the delete method and placed elsewhere. But, I wrote a more conservative patch for now. Attached is a patch to the 6.x-2.1 content module's content.crud.inc file to extend the content_field_instance_delete() method to add a third parameter that indicates whether you should perform all the rebuild/clearing actions or not. This $rebuild argument defaults to TRUE, preserving the current behavior. In those cases in content.crud.inc where several fields are being deleted at once and content_clear_type_cache(TRUE) is already being called afterwards (like when deleting a content type or all the content fields for a particular module), I've set the $rebuild arg to false. This removes the excessive delays for me.

I've only tested locally and not extensively, so YMMV.

I was just about to reinstall CCK since a few content-types I created didn't have the "delete" option available. But decided to go into the database to remove the unnecessary content-types instead. Here's what I did...

Log in to PHPMyAdmin where you are hosting your drupal Database.
1) from the table "uc_product_classes" delete the particular content types with the following SQL query...
SELECT * FROM `uc_product_classes` WHERE `name`="my-content-type"
Where 'my-content-type' is the name of the content type you are deleting. Then hit the red X to delete that row.

2) from the table "node_type" delete the particular content types with the following SQL query...
SELECT * FROM `node_type` WHERE `name` = "my-content-type"
Where 'my-content-type' is the name of the content type you are deleting. Then hit the red X to delete that row.

3) from the table "menu_links" delete the particular content types with the following SQL query...
SELECT * FROM `menu_links` WHERE `link_title` = "my-content-type"
Where 'my-content-type' is the name of the content type you are deleting. Then hit the red X to delete that row.

*Before doing this be sure to delete any nodes or content related to the content-type you want to delete to avoid errors. Additionally, be sure to 'flush all caches' to reload the correct content-types.
**Also be sure to put the correct query in based on your database names (some might have a "drupal_" before the table name).

Hope this helps someone.
//L

hi all ,

i have created a content type and set the thumbnail to be required , and when i started to enter data i figured out that required is not good for me , so i went and remove the tick from required and suddenly an error appeared :

user warning: Got a packet bigger than 'max_allowed_packet' bytes query: UPDATE cache_views SET data

any help please

thanks