Circular hierarchical taxonomies are bad

First, try 6.x-1.x-dev.

Second, perhaps deleting your taxonomy will be necessary.

I have same problem. Am using a complex taxonomy with terms with multiple parents. Some term names may repeat.

When I delete all of the taxonomy aliases it still happens. It seems to be triggered by an attempt to generate an alias for one node (I've done about 200 of 300, and pathauto is stuck somewhere). It also happens when I execute a view of all content nodes. I have no idea how this could implicate the taxonomy. Sorry for such vague diagnostics (it's nearly midnight and I've run out of energy), hope it helps. Webel

I removed all multiple parents from my taxonomy. I used direct SQL to check that there are no terms with multiple parents, and no terms with repeat names. It still happens. I've tried deleting all path auto aliases for vocabs. The first few batches of 50 go through fine, then it stalls, even if I turn the batch size down to 1.

@greggles who wrote:

First, try 6.x-1.x-dev.

Will do and will report back here.

Second, perhaps deleting your taxonomy will be necessary.

I hope not.

I tried 6.x-1.x-dev. Same problem. And like webavant I had previously had problems with Taxonomy Manager (in my case during a merge). However I am quite sure now that my taxonomy tables are clean because of direct SQL checks.

Could having an ampersand in the term name cause trouble ? Yes, desperate guessing now.

Devel module's dpr to the rescue:

/**
 * Find all ancestors of a given term ID.
 */
function taxonomy_get_parents_all($tid) {
  $parents = array();
  dpr($tid,FALSE,"taxonomy_get_parents_all.tid"); //DEBUG
  if ($tid) {
    $parents[] = taxonomy_get_term($tid);
	dpr($tid,FALSE,"taxonomy_get_parents_all.parents"); //DEBUG
	$n = 0;
    while ($parent = taxonomy_get_parents($parents[$n]->tid)) {
	  dpr($tid,FALSE,"taxonomy_get_parents.parent"); //DEBUG
      $parents = array_merge($parents, $parent);
      $n++;
    }
  }
  return $parents;
}

Infinite recursion found:

taxonomy_get_parents_all.tid => 155

taxonomy_get_parents_all.parents => 155

taxonomy_get_parents.parent => 155

taxonomy_get_parents.parent => 155

..

Sneaky. Direct SQL on term_hierarchy shows the parent of 155 is 255. And the parent of 255 is .. tada .. 255. Taxonomy Manager did not catch this. Deleted offending row with 255 255 from term_hierarchy, reran ..

taxonomy_get_parents_all.tid => 19

taxonomy_get_parents_all.parents => 19

taxonomy_get_parents.parent => 19

taxonomy_get_parents_all.tid => 203

taxonomy_get_parents_all.parents => 203

taxonomy_get_parents.parent => 203

taxonomy_get_parents.parent => 203
..

Another one. This time 203 has 203 as parent. Delete offending circular row .. now it runs through fine.

Ahh... what better way to spend a Sunday evening than to solve problems with a computer that you would never have had without a computer. Now that's what I call achievement, really productive work. And I can also use all my views again. Case solved.

It might be a good idea to code some catches for such circular taxonomy refs in, especially given that Taxonomy Manager can create them it seems

@webavant I am happy for this to be marked closed, it's up to you.

I don't think Pathauto should include code that catches an inconsistent data model created by other modules. If we did that where would it stop?

Can anyone else confirm they had this circular reference problem as a result of using Taxonomy Manager? If so we can move this issue to that queue.

I am for moving it to Taxonomy Manager.

Great.

I added validations to the Taxonomy Manager to ensure a consistent hierarchy, this should prevent adding of cycles during hierarchy changes or merging.

thanks !