By aplourde on

This didn't used to happen; but I've been mucking around quite a bit learning about this Drupal thing and ANOTHER weird thing has popped up.

Now, whenever I create a story, if I don't type something in the URL path settings box I get the error "The path is already in use" and the URL path box turns red.

If I enter a path all is fine. Except, I don't want to ALWAYS have to enter a path. I know this field is optional. It wasn't initially required on my site. Yet, now...

I have made a bunch of changes to the bluemarine theme; but by switching back to the original this doesn't seem to fix things; so I'm pretty sure that is not the cause. I've updated to the CVS version of filemanager; but that seems an unlikely source. I can't think of what else I've done that might cause the weirdness.

Help. I'm drowning in the Drupal Sea! Help!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

aplourde’s picture

aplourde commented

Sometimes you just have to figure things out yourself....

Inside the URL table in my Drupal DB I found a record with a blank alias (the 'dst' field). I used phpMyAdmin to delete this record and all is fine again in the world.

Of course, now I have to wonder how this bad record got into the URL table. If I can get it to happen again I will report back with the cause.

Adam B. Plourde

jvandervort’s picture

jvandervort commented

Great find. Thanks for the help... Even though I didn't ask for it:)

-JV

-John

rtdean93’s picture

rtdean93 commented

Thanks for the help

Bobby Dean

scott.r’s picture

scott.r commented

Another satisfied and relieved hair-puller-outer here.
Thanks, Adam!

shunshifu’s picture

shunshifu commented

worked for me to
thanks

tombarton’s picture

tombarton commented

Great fix - although it took me a while to figure out how to apply it. I began by deleting the entire dht field, which confused the hell out of my database. It was just random the blank record which needed deleting. Definitely saved the day (but remember kids, always backup your database before deleting anything!)

Tom

Ira’s picture

Ira commented

Very annoying but now fixed per your method.
The node that had blank URL was an acidfree node.

patrickfgoddard’s picture

patrickfgoddard commented

Nice work in finding the solution to that one. Saved my hide.

-enzo-’s picture

-enzo- commented

Hello aplourde

Thanks for your help

Regards,

--
enzo - Eduardo Garcia
weKnow - http://www.weknowinc.com
Please use the git author option: --author="enzo " for any patch I did and used in a new module release

khuram’s picture

khuram commented

Worked perfectly.

drupalfan81’s picture

drupalfan81 commented

OH MY GOODNESS! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! And THANK YOU GOOGLE for indexing this so well. I was about to crap my pants, because I knew tracking down this was going to be hard.

I had a bunch of old aliases for my taxonomy terms, so I was mucking about in the database the other day and killing all the taxonomy alias paths in this table and then running bulk update. I guess while I was using Sequel Pro, I accidentally added a record without noticing. Sure enough, after reading the second post, I checked the table for a null record and found it. Deleted it and bam I was able to save my nodes again.

But the behavior was really strange, as it was only happening on 3 of my 6 content types when I would save. Another annoying thing is that nothing would be updated in the database logging table. So I was worried this would take me days to figure out and I would have to revert to my old database backup. YEAH! Thanks so much!

neoliminal’s picture

neoliminal commented

I hate that acid free does this!!

user901’s picture

user901 commented

Amazing, thanks to you and google.
==================================
test, retest and backup! no guarantees in life!

bb_matt’s picture

bb_matt commented

I could be wrong in this case, but rather than hacking your database directly, first go to Administer -> URL Aliases and check to see if you haven't got a dodgy alias.

This is always my first port of call when I get a path error of the nature your describing and so far, it's always worked.

dadderley’s picture

dadderley commented

Thanks for the tip! You saved me a lot of time in my bughunt. I went through the path alias table and found the offending path for 1 node.

I just set up pathauto and did a bulk update. One of the nodes had this as a title ("How it All Ends"). Pathauto made it into a path alias which was this "how-it-all-ends" (including the quotation marks).

This borked the whole path alias fuctionality. The dreaded error message "The path is already in use." came up and the url path box turned pink. I could not save the node until I overrode pathauto and named the node something. Then I had to go back and re-save the node, at this point pathauto gave it the proper alias.

I did have pathauto set to use the [title-raw] token and this is where I got into trouble.

Using [title] pathauto changes the " character into quot so the path would be quothow-it-all-endsquot. This is not pretty but it does not kill the functionality.

pcambra’s picture

pcambra
he/him
Primary language Spanish
commented

thanks! this solved my problem

Better than updating the database, is doing through interface as bb_mat points!

xiaowan’s picture

xiaowan commented

Great, I found my problem. I am newbie in drupal, because you said check something, finally, I found, happy+ing

shailv’s picture

shailv commented

I hope bb_matt is right. I also check my URL alias settings and there was a node created using Acidfree album. I deleted that node and all is working fine now. So, in my opinion there is no need to make any changes in database.

kurma-1’s picture

kurma-1 commented

The solutions from dougzilla and shailv both worked fine. Thanks all.. I tested both either:
1) change pathauto from [title-raw] to [title].., then save the node with blank URL Alias again.. OR
2) go to Administer->URL Alias and delete the node with blank URL Alias.

My concern now is, will this problem happen again? If we choose the first solution, will it solve the problem forever?
But anyway, it does happen again, we know what to do :D
err.. I also don't recommend change anything in the database.. unless we really had to..

Thanks again..

bcobin’s picture

bcobin commented

I love you guys (male and female) one and all. I had also installed Acidfree right before this happened; I would think that therein might lie the cause.

In any event, deleting the blank node solved the problem - easy as pie. Thanks for the assist, dougzilla!

manogolf’s picture

manogolf commented

Saved me. Thanks

prohazka’s picture

prohazka commented

Hey... nice work.
I didn't have the exact problem. I had create a page with a path - but deleted it.
Problem was - the path wasn't deleted.

Later on I needed that url for a new page anyway.
But alas - it was already "in use" - even though the node was deleted.

So the fix: Go to Drupal DB >> URL PATH - and manually delete the path no longer in use.

Worked like a charm - just didn't really think of it before reading your solution!
So Thumbs up - thanx!

drupalfever’s picture

drupalfever commented

Worked for me too. Thanks.

kcolwell’s picture

kcolwell commented

Wow... this thread just saved me from a huge headache! Nice work everyone!

kc

nileshlohar’s picture

nileshlohar commented

Great work....
Worked for me too