XdbModelException: Field could not be found in the model or the field is not enabled for indexing/searching

2018-06-152018-06-15 Andy Burnscontacts, facets, segmentation, xconnectLeave a comment

I was creating a custom segmentation rule predicate for Sitecore 9, and when I tried to create a segment using the rule, I got an error inside Sitecore’s List Manager:

Field could not be found in the model or the field is not enabled for indexing/searching

That’s kind of annoying. What caused this? Well, it was a long, painful odyssey finding out.

TL;DR – If you’re using an extension method to get a facet for your CreateContactSearchQuery method – like Sitecore do – it’s method name must match the Facet Key name.

No, I’m not kidding.

Continue reading “XdbModelException: Field could not be found in the model or the field is not enabled for indexing/searching” →

XConnect – Get a contact by their TrackerId…

2018-06-082018-06-15 Andy Burnsanalytics, xconnect, contactsLeave a comment

So, Sitecore 9 has the replaced xDB in MongoDB with XConnect. Fine. Our contacts will be stored there (ultimately, in SQL server). Fine too.

One question though – how do we get the Sitecore.XConnect.Contact object for the current (possibly unidentified) contact?

It used to be that you could get the Contact record from Tracker.Current.Session.Contact, but that doesn’t work any more – that gets the Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.Contact, which isn’t the same type at the Sitecore.XConnect.Contact which is replacing it. Confused yet?

Well, to make matters worse, the Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.Contact.ContactId may or may not match the Sitecore.XConnect.Contact.ContactId. I think.

I couldn’t find any information about how to resolve the Tracker ID to the XConnect contact. What’s a boy to do?

EDIT: Sadly, there is a better way than below. Unfortunately, it’s in a different bit of the documentation. See https://doc.sitecore.net/developers/xp/tracking-and-session/tracker/tracking-contacts/contact-facets/update-facets.html

Continue reading “XConnect – Get a contact by their TrackerId…” →

XdbModelException – “The type of this instance does not correspond to any type in the model”

2018-06-08 Andy BurnsXDB, xconnect, contactsLeave a comment

Working with xConnect to save custom facet data, I started getting this error:

An unhandled exception of type ‘Sitecore.XConnect.Schema.XdbModelException’ occurred … The type of this instance does not correspond to any type in the model

Weirdly, the other 3 (nearly identical) facets worked just fine. Tracking down the issue was “fun”…

Continue reading “XdbModelException – “The type of this instance does not correspond to any type in the model”” →

A brief analysis of the NCSC’s “Top 1000 Passwords” list

2018-05-16 Andy BurnspasswordsLeave a comment

So, the NCSC has been running a study on the prevalence of the ‘Top 1000 Passwords’. It’s useful stuff, but I wondered – just how frequent are these passwords? How can they know? Where did this list come from?

I noticed, for example, that the list included baseball, which I gather is a degenerate form of rounders. It’s certainly not what I’d expect on a UK-centric list of passwords. Similarly, chicago, and redsox were unlikely. (There are, however, cricket and wanker, so it isn’t an entirely Americanised list).

I also noticed some passwords – like rasdzv3 – that I couldn’t see any obvious reason for being particularly popular.

Anyway – I wondered – how frequent are these? What was the most frequent? Continue reading “A brief analysis of the NCSC’s “Top 1000 Passwords” list” →

Use Sitecore Image Resizing even for Background-Images

2018-04-202018-04-18 Andy BurnsMediaLeave a comment

Recently, I’ve looked at two Sitecore sites (not written by me!) where areas of the page (<div> tags) have a background image set by inline-CSS. For example, something like this:

Which has markup like this:

Okay, what’s wrong with this? Continue reading “Use Sitecore Image Resizing even for Background-Images” →

UK Postcode Validation Regex

2018-04-10 Andy BurnsPostcodesLeave a comment

So, the Government offer us a regex to validate UK postcodes. According to Wikipedia it should be:

^([Gg][Ii][Rr] 0[Aa]{2})|((([A-Za-z][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]{1,2})|(([A-Za-z][0-9][A-Za-z])|([A-Za-z][A-Ha-hJ-Yj-y][0-9]?[A-Za-z])))) [0-9][A-Za-z]{2})$

Nice. That’s not complicated, is it? Continue reading “UK Postcode Validation Regex” →

Chrome – OTS parsing error: invalid version tag

2018-03-132018-03-13 Andy BurnsHTTPLeave a comment

I saw this weird warning in Chrome’s DevTools while looking at a site:

OTS parsing error: invalid version tag

Uh-huh. That’s a bit strange. Unable to download fonts? What caused that?

Well, I tried going to the font’s URL – and got the ‘Page Not Found’ page! Well, that’s annoying – but a 404 page is clearly not a font.

However, this site’s error pages return HTTP 200 – so Chrome expects a font…

Make sure your error pages return a correct HTTP status code. If you don’t, it can cause problems. Normally, I find that it’s false positives on automated penetration tests, but this is a new and exciting variation.

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