I'm using PoorMan's Cron, of course, but that didn't cause the error. This message was thrown:

<br />
<b>Fatal error</b>:  Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'String could not be parsed as XML' in /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/sites/all/modules/twitter/twitter.inc:448
Stack trace:
#0 /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/sites/all/modules/twitter/twitter.inc(448): SimpleXMLElement-&gt;__construct('')
#1 /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/sites/all/modules/twitter/twitter.inc(101): _twitter_convert_xml_to_array(NULL)
#2 /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/sites/all/modules/twitter/twitter.module(185): twitter_fetch_timeline('jonvibe')
#3 [internal function]: twitter_cron()
#4 /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/includes/module.inc(471): call_user_func_array('twitter_cron', Array)
#5 /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/sites/all/modules/poormanscron/poormanscron.module(61): module_invoke_all('cron')
#6 [internal function]: poormanscron_exit()
#7 /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/includes/module.inc(471): call_user_func_array('poormanscron_ex...', Array)
#8 /homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/includes/common.inc(1575):  in <b>/homepages/18/d278310800/htdocs/dev/sites/all/modules/twitter/twitter.inc</b> on line <b>448</b><br />

Is there a way that we can catch the error and put it into Watchdog rather than it being able to print to screen?

By the way, the Twitter module has functioned perfectly for two months. I think this is more of a "tying up loose ends" bug.

-Corey

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#9 0001-Add-try-catch-to-avoid-SimpleXMLelement-exception-on.patch1.12 KBmarvil07
#3 0001-avoid-exception-on-SimpleXMLElement-constructor.patch908 bytesmarvil07

Comments

prbass’s picture

prbass commented

I've recently started having this problem too, although it does still seem to have parsed all of my tweets correctly.

This is a bit of a nightmare to troubleshoot. It could be an issue with Twitter's RSS feed, or with the parser.

I'm looking into it, if I find a way to resolve this I'll post it here.

mackh’s picture

mackh commented

Also seeing this error.

marvil07’s picture

marvil07 commented
Title: Uncaught Fatal Error » Uncaught exception at SimpleXMLElement constructor
Version: 6.x-2.x-dev » 6.x-2.6
Assigned: Unassigned » marvil07
Status: Active » Needs review
Issue tags: +exception
StatusFileSize
new 0001-avoid-exception-on-SimpleXMLElement-constructor.patch908 bytes

I had the same error on a recent cron run.

I do not know why we got to that point(I can not reproduce it), but here a patch trying to solve it(testing it changing by by hand $data to null :-p).

marvil07’s picture

marvil07 commented
Priority: Normal » Critical

maybe and uncaught exception can be a critical bug. Or maybe 3.x branch is the priority, I really do not know..

prbass’s picture

prbass commented

See http://drupal.org/node/541892#comment-1896560

This seems to be caused by twitter failing rather than a problem with the twitter module. This would explain why I was not able to reproduce the error before, but could get it on every cron run today whilst there was a DDoS attack shutting down twitter's servers

Perhaps it would be preferable for the module not to spit out this error message when it fails given the fact that twitter is not the most reliable of services. But hey mustn't grumble its not like we are paying them!

plan9’s picture

plan9 commented

marvil07's patch at #3 solved the problem for me on both 6.x and 5.x installs.
Thanks marvil07 ;)

G

sterndata’s picture

sterndata commented

The patch doesn't work because $data is not necessarily null when the error occurs. The thing is that it seems to be intermittent. My logs show failures for several hours, followed by several hours of success. Therefore, it seems that Twitter is not always sending in the expected information.

plan9’s picture

plan9 commented

I can also confirm that the patch doesn't work consistently :(

marvil07’s picture

marvil07 commented
StatusFileSize
new 0001-Add-try-catch-to-avoid-SimpleXMLelement-exception-on.patch1.12 KB

The first attempt of this patch was an is_null() verification, but after the report that it does not was not work in all cases I wrotea a patch based on srhaber patch on #541892: Increase readability of errors in watchdog, but applied on the necessary portion of code(the constructor).

We must have clear that Exception are heavy on php, but this seems like a needed case to use.

I also found that all functions that use _twitter_convert_xml_to_array() use it with a foreach, so I'm returning an empty array on /supposed/ twitter fail. Except two of them(twitter_fetch_friends() and twitter_fetch_followers()) that are not used from inside the module AFAIK; so maybe where it's used there is a change to do(but I think it should use it in the same way).

mkstalen’s picture

mkstalen commented

I applied the patch and the emails I was receiving went away, but I started to get heap and heaps of php errors being logged by drupal (access at http:///admin/reports/dblog) which all looked like this...

Type php
Date Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - 23:00
User Anonymous
Location http:///cron.php
Referrer
Message SimpleXMLElement::__construct() [simplexmlelement.--construct]: ^ in /var/www/html/sites//modules/twitter/twitter.inc on line 478.
Severity error
Hostname
Operations

So I've removed the patch.

plan9’s picture

plan9 commented

I applied your latest patch marvil07 and although I still get masses of SimpleXMLElement errors in watchdog - punctuated by your patches error message:

'Convering xml to array failed. One possible reason is that twitter is down now. The convert failed with exception !exception.' (spot the typo) cron does at least now successfully complete - which is a great improvement.

Thanks

G

pribeh’s picture

pribeh commented

Applied patch but still get wall of SimpleXMLElement errors. Thanks for your efforts.

TomChiverton’s picture

TomChiverton commented

Snap. For instance, with 'import Twitter statuses' on, you get a huge stack of errors on users pages:

# warning: SimpleXMLElement::__construct() [simplexmlelement.--construct]: Entity: line 10: parser error : Opening and ending tag mismatch: META line 8 and HEAD in /home/drupal/modules/twitter/twitter.inc on line 448.
# warning: SimpleXMLElement::__construct() [simplexmlelement.--construct]: in /home/drupal/modules/twitter/twitter.inc on line 448.
# warning: SimpleXMLElement::__construct() [simplexmlelement.--construct]: ^ in /home/drupal/modules/twitter/twitter.inc on line 448.
# warning: SimpleXMLElement::__construct() [simplexmlelement.--construct]: Entity: line 11: parser error : Opening and ending tag mismatch: P line 11 and BODY in /home/drupal/modules/twitter/twitter.inc on line 448.

etc.

Can anyone say if the 6.3-dev version has this bug too or not ?

rj’s picture

rj commented

I was having the same problems and patch #9 fixed it. Thanks!

criz’s picture

criz
he/him
Location Vienna/Austria
commented

patch from #9 seems to have fixed it for me too...

nomonstersinme’s picture

nomonstersinme commented

The patch from #9 allows me to run cron successfully now! Thanks!

infojunkie’s picture

infojunkie
Location Vancouver
commented

I used libxml_use_internal_errors(TRUE); just before the $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data); statement to force the XML library to defer complaining about Twitter error responses. This seems to resolve both the watchdog messages and the cron execution.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

RE: #17: is that in addition to, or in lieu of the patch from #9?

infojunkie’s picture

infojunkie
Location Vancouver
commented

AFAIR, I didn't use the patch.

marvil07’s picture

marvil07 commented
Assigned: marvil07 » Unassigned
juampynr’s picture

juampynr commented
Status: Needs review » Fixed

Applied patch from marvil07 with some little rewording and added t(). I have verified it forcing an Exception within the "try" block.

http://drupalcode.org/project/twitter.git/commitdiff/fb7418f4c1d219078b5...

As there were some other commits in the dev branch of 6.x-2.x that are not present at 6.x-2.6, I have released a new version at http://drupal.org/node/1319030, although I suggest to upgrade to the latest version at the project page (http://drupal.org/project/twitter).

Cheers

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)
Issue tags: -exception

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

Issue tags: +exception

Restoring issue tags, see #2125755: System messages removed all issue tags during D7 upgrade.