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September 13, 2019 / kiranpatils

Coveo for Sitecore (C4S) Quick Start guide

Challenge:

Your client/your company has got Coveo for Sitecore license and you have to get your Coveo implementation done. And you have few of the following questions:

  • How to approach?
  • Does Coveo replaces Solr/AzureSearch?
  • Coveo for Sitecore setup is complex?
  • Coveo is on Cloud only?
  • How much development time it takes? I must develop everything on my own?
  • Can I have Coveo on premise setup?
  • From where I should start?

Then this post is for you only!

Solution:

Before I go in step by step approach let me try to answer few of the above common questions:

  1. Coveo doesn’t replace Solr/AzureSearch/Lucene [If you are still using Lucene]. Even if you have Coveo you will need to use Solr/AzureSearch because Sitecore still relies on it. Also, for some of the functionality which doesn’t need Machine learning and relevance based tuning capabilities. Would strongly recommend not to use Coveo. But use Solr/AzureSearch. As Coveo has query limits and Coveo is not right fit for those kinds of needs.
  2. Coveo for Sitecore is only available on Cloud — Coveo has stopped giving on premise version any more. Coveo for Cloud setup is straight forward and in cloud.

I hope these answers few of your basic questions. You have more? please drop a note in comment section of this post.

Have been involved in few of the Coveo for Sitecore implementations and based on my learning came up with my approach towards starting Coveo project.

Before you delve further, I’m not Coveo Guru. And following list is just few pointers based on my learning. Hope it works for you as well. And I encourage you to amend to this list. So, someone can have smooth start on Coveo as you had

For saving my keystrokes, As I’ve also limited keystrokes left : https://keysleft.com/ instead of writing Coveo for Sitecore, I will mention C4S. They both are same.

Let’s delve in to this:

Hope you found this information helpful. If yes, then Thanks to Coveo team, Few awesome community members for all such helpful material for someone to get started.

Everything has been there already. This post has just indexed all the information in single post — Like Coveo does with your data!

Happy Coveo Implementation! 🙂

Featured image credits : https://blog.coveo.com/coveo-for-sitecore-5-the-ultimate-search-recommendations-engine-for-sitecore/

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Filed under Coveo, Sitecore
0
September 5, 2019 / kiranpatils

NullReferenceException when trying to load Coveo indexes in Indexing Manager

Challenge:

After successful configuration of Coveo instance, We thought to add Coveo transform files in our deployment process and do deployment.

As soon as we did deployment we started noticing following Stacktrace:

120 13:19:48 ERROR [Sitecore Services]: HTTP GET URL https://scbasics/coveo/api/index/v1/indexes   Exception System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.  at Coveo.SearchProvider.AbstractSearchIndexSummary.<get_NumberOfDocuments>b__42_1()  at Coveo.SearchProvider.AbstractSearchIndexSummary.TryPerformCallToIndexCommunication[T](Func`1 p_CallToIndexCommunication, T p_DefaultValue) .................................................................System.Linq.Enumerable.WhereSelectListIterator`2.MoveNext()  at System.Collections.Generic.List`1..ctor(IEnumerable`1 collection)  at System.Linq.Enumerable.ToList[TSource]System.Web.Http.Filters.ActionFilterAttribute.<CallOnActionExecutedAsync>d__5.MoveNext() --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---

If you are already facing this error and trying to find a solution. Then this post might help you.

Solution:

  • We also checked Coveo Diagnostics page, and it was showing all green.
  • Command center was not showing list of indexes
  • Sitecore log file was showing above stack trace for each Command center screen load
  • As you do, we also did quick google search and came across this post from my colleague – Dan S.

https://connect.coveo.com/s/question/0D50d00006UQwvjCAD/nullreferenceexception-when-trying-to-load-indexes-in-indexing-manager

We checked all our config files. But we haven’t found anything suspicious.

After spending lot of time, we could figure this out. After looking at log file from start — We found following entry:

As soon as we seen this, We thought to check Coveo admin user (We recommend different user for Coveo) was locked out somehow.

This might have been locked out due to deployment errors/transformation errors. But stacktrace what we seen in staring of this post didn’t help us pin point that.

So, It is good to check full log file. As there are few main errors will happen during Initialization only.

Special thanks to Varun to work along with me to troubleshoot this.

Filed under Sitecore
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August 9, 2019 / kiranpatils

Sitecore 91 Azure PaaS Identity service error

Challenge:

Recently we were trying to setup Sitecore 9.1 (XP Single) on Azure PaaS with Sitecore’s ARM Template : https://github.com/Sitecore/Sitecore-Azure-Quickstart-Templates/tree/master/Sitecore%209.1.1/XPSingle

We were able to run setup successfully. But post login, it was showing blank screen. Instead of Sitecore Launchpad.

And we noticed following error on Identity server:

019-08-05T21:02:26.6633964+00:00 [FTL] (Sitecore STS/RD0003FF6419BC) Unhandled exception: “IDX10630: The ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’ for signing cannot be smaller than ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’ bits. KeySize: ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’.
Parameter name: key.KeySize”
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: IDX10630: The ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’ for signing cannot be smaller than ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’ bits. KeySize: ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’.
Parameter name: key.KeySize
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.AsymmetricSignatureProvider.ValidateAsymmetricSecurityKeySize(SecurityKey key, String algorithm, Boolean willCreateSignatures)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.AsymmetricSignatureProvider..ctor(SecurityKey key, String algorithm, Boolean willCreateSignatures)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.CryptoProviderFactory.CreateSignatureProvider(SecurityKey key, String algorithm, Boolean willCreateSignatures)
   at Microsoft.IdentityModel.Tokens.CryptoProviderFactory.CreateForSigning(SecurityKey key, String algorithm)
   at System.IdentityModel.Tokens.Jwt.JwtSecurityTokenHandler.CreateEncodedSignature(String input, SigningCredentials signingCredentials)
   at System.IdentityModel.Tokens.Jwt.JwtSecurityTokenHandler.WriteToken(SecurityToken token)
   at IdentityServer4.Services.DefaultTokenCreationService.CreateJwtAsync(JwtSecurityToken jwt)
   at IdentityServer4.Services.DefaultTokenCreationService.CreateTokenAsync(Token token)
   at IdentityServer4.Services.DefaultTokenService.CreateSecurityTokenAsync(Token token)
   at IdentityServer4.ResponseHandling.AuthorizeResponseGenerator.CreateImplicitFlowResponseAsync(ValidatedAuthorizeRequest request, String authorizationCode)
   at IdentityServer4.ResponseHandling.AuthorizeResponseGenerator.CreateHybridFlowResponseAsync(ValidatedAuthorizeRequest request)
   at IdentityServer4.ResponseHandling.AuthorizeResponseGenerator.CreateResponseAsync(ValidatedAuthorizeRequest request)
   at IdentityServer4.Endpoints.AuthorizeEndpointBase.ProcessAuthorizeRequestAsync(NameValueCollection parameters, ClaimsPrincipal user, ConsentResponse consent)
   at IdentityServer4.Endpoints.AuthorizeCallbackEndpoint.ProcessAsync(HttpContext context)
   at IdentityServer4.Endpoints.AuthorizeCallbackEndpoint.ProcessAsync(HttpContext context)
   at IdentityServer4.Hosting.IdentityServerMiddleware.Invoke(HttpContext context, IEndpointRouter router, IUserSession session, IEventService events)
2019-08-05T21:02:26.6665182+00:00 [ERR] (Sitecore STS/RD0003FF6419BC) Connection id “”0HLOPSKHN4OKD””, Request id “”0HLOPSKHN4OKD:00000005″”: An unhandled exception was thrown by the application.
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: IDX10630: The ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’ for signing cannot be smaller than ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’ bits. KeySize: ‘[PII is hidden by default. Set the ‘ShowPII’ flag in IdentityModelEventSource.cs to true to reveal it.]’.
Parameter name: key.KeySize

If you are also facing similar issue or noticing same error, then this post may have a solution for you.

Solution:

To troubleshoot this further, we had to look at each role to find out what was going on under the hood:

  1. CM Server:
    1. Logs : We were not able to find anything useful. Config file : We checked Config file here \App_Config\Sitecore\Owin.Authentication.IdentityServer\Sitecore.Owin.Authentication.IdentityServer.config and it also had nothing suspicious.
  2. Identity Server :
    1. We could see above listed error in Identity server’s log

It was tough to decrypt that error. Because it’s not general stack trace. So, thought to do quick google search and found only one link, which was related to Sitecore.

Once we couldn’t find anything. We thought to reach out to Sitecore and they were able to help us.

This is what Sitecore support shared:

Looking at the exception it seems the same issue reported here:
https://github.com/IdentityServer/IdentityServer3/issues/2845

In order to solve it you will need a new certificate with 2048 bits key length.

We checked our Certificate and it was using 1024 bits. And as soon as we generated new certificate with 2048, reinstalled Sitecore app and we were able to fix this error.

One more thing — When you delete app from portal. It doesn’t clean certificate. So, before redeploying your app with new certificate. Please make sure all old certificated are deleted.

Hope this helps!

Filed under Sitecore
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July 21, 2019 / kiranpatils

Does your Sitecore Azure App Index rebuild got stuck?

Challenge:

For one of our solution, Index rebuild was getting stuck after deployment (Jobs.aspx will show sitecore_Web_index is running since hours and it won’t complete till you restart and rebuild again). It never happened for other clients. One thing about this solution was it was on Azure App.

Solution:

As you do, We also did quick google search and found good posts around same topic. But neither of it was helpful.

So, we started digging more on our own.

Our solution was having Solr Switching configurations. So, we thought to check some records in Core DB. Want to know more about it? This post explains it nicely : https://sitecoresaga.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/solr-index-changing-existing-solr-index-configuration-to-point-to-a-new-collection/

  • From KUDU – We found out MachineName
  • Fired following query against Core DB:
  • We noticed lot of duplicate entries. Which we were not expecting to see.

We reached out to Sitecore and they suggested us to change Instance name setting to use custom name instead of default (Which is combination of website and machine name): <setting name=”InstanceName” value=”” />. We set this value to MYCLIENT-VM on our CM Server and this fixed issue!

How?

As you know Sitecore Web Apps are Azure Web Apps and Azure spins up new VM and swaps it on the fly. Which means your machine name will change. And Sitecore EventQueue relies a lot on Instance name value. Read this nice post to know more about EventQueue : https://www.geekhive.com/buzz/post/2018/02/sitecore-event-queue-visual-diagram/

Filed under Sitecore
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June 30, 2019 / kiranpatils

Sitecore Geolocation Basics

Challenge:

Sitecore Geolocation service is OOTB and available for free with unlimited lookups. And lot of great community folks have shared in-depth articles to get started. But still have seen people facing challenges with Geolocation. So, wanted to consolidate all good resources and real-world challenges in this post. So, it helps you have a smooth process of getting started with Sitecore Geolocation service.

Solution:

If you are new to Sitecore Geolocation and would like to know more about it. e.g. Why? What and How? As I mentioned earlier, few community folks have done great job blogging about it. I will share few of those here:

How can I activate Geolocation?

With Sitecore 9, Geolocation is available OOTB. You just need to activate it from App Center. For that you have to login to App Center. To login and activate, you need to either use same email address which you used for purchasing your Sitecore license or contact your Sitecore contact, and s(he) will give you one Form (PDF) using which you can allow other user to access App Center.

Once you login and activate Geolocation from Appcenter. You should be all set. If your environment is scaled, you just need to get this activated from CM only.

You need to do this one-time activity for all your environments e.g. INT/QA/UAT/STAGE/PROD.

No Geolocation data on first request

Sitecore Geolocation works asynchronously, due to that at times you might not see geolocation data on first request/for new IP, Which is not in cache.

Sitecore GeoIP logic
Geolocation flow (Image Courtesy : https://www.brimit.com/blog/sitecore-geoip-geolocation-module-how-it-works )

Sitecore community has few solutions for this challenge:

  1. https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/320734 : Here solution1 uses delay logic — Which personally, I would like to avoid for heavy traffic website. Solution2 suggests using Custom provider.
  2. https://www.brimit.com/blog/sitecore-geoip-geolocation-module-how-it-works : Brimit team, has done a great job and created Fallback module. Which seems derived from Solution2 suggested in last article. We’ve used this for one of our client — And it’s working fine!
  3. https://www.redmoon.london/sitecore-ip-geolocation-service-resolving-geoip-information-on-the-first-request-using-circuit-breaker-design-pattern/ : Recently came to know about this approach — Which is using Circuit breaker approach. I haven’t personally tried this. But good to explore.

How to troubleshoot?

Sitecore geolocation works fine in lower environments. But as soon as you go on higher environments, you start noticing that it doesn’t work. Few of the reasons behind that are:

  1. Application Gateway
  2. Load balancer
  3. Reverse proxy
  4. Corporate Proxy
  5. Firewall

Your Production environment will have either/all of the above things and they might cause trouble in overall working mechanism of Geolocation.

For any troubleshooting you need right tools. Let me share few of those:

  • https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/798498 : Sitecore has done good job documenting all the steps. Especially TestIP.aspx page. Use this to do quick test of geolocation configuration.
  • https://gist.github.com/klpatil/d4c5d242b715ac8c6213366e85be585c : I have also created GeoLocation Test page, which prints Geolocation information, all request headers. Here, you need to closely observe — X-Forwarded-For header. It should have Client’s IP address. How to check that?
    • Open https://www.whatismyip.com/ and take a note of IPV4 address.
    • Now. Open GeolocationTest page and IPV4 address should be value for X-Forwarded-For header. If it’s not – Then something is not rightly configured.

Let’s understand about each possibility and solution:

This image depicts this challenge nicely (Image Courtesy : https://mikael.com/2018/09/sitecore-x-forwarded-for-handling/)

Hope this helped, Have I missed scenario which you faced? Please share, I will amend it in this post.

Happy Geo-locating! 🙂

Filed under Geolocation, Sitecore, Troulbeshooting
1
June 23, 2019 / kiranpatils

SolrCloud with Sitecore troubleshooting

Challenge:

Recently we launched highly scalable Sitecore Projects for few of our Enterprise level Sitecore clients. And during that faced some challenges with SolrCloud. Which I again faced in last week and thought to share it pen down. So, I can share with you and I can also refer, When I face it again.

Solution:

So, If you are new to Sitecore or haven’t worked with Solr or SolrCloud and need some basic knowledge. I will share few great articles already posted by our community members:

Above articles are good to get basic knowledge, Once you have that and If you are keen to set it up in ensemble (Dictionary : a group of musicians, actors, or dancers who perform together.)mode. Ensemble mode means — Imagine your Sitecore application is your concert happening on the web and to make sure you have great concert. Three Solr nodes are performing together! For Setup there are few links. But I found following links super helpful:

Once your setup is done, It will look like this:

sitecore solrcloud
Solr cloud setup – Image courtesy : https://github.com/ivanbuzyka/Sitecore.SolrCloudConfiguration/wiki

So far so good. And lot of folks can get setup done. But as soon as you connect with Sitecore. You might come across some challenges in your day to day life working with SolrCloud. If they come they are hard to troubleshoot as they are in JAVA Tech Stack, Which will be tough for any Sitecore Developer – As they are different Tech Stack. Also, at times those errors are hard to decrypt and at times hard to locate as well. Here are my learnings which might help you, When you face challenges with SolrCloud and Sitecore.

Scenario#1

After few days of connecting to SolrCloud and couple of weeks before go-live. Our Sitecore log files were busy with follwoing errors:

2019-03-26T15:58:40 PID[4988] Error ManagedPoolThread #5 15:58:40 ERROR Exception
Exception: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException
Message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
Source: mscorlib
at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethod(Object target, Object[] arguments, Signature sig, Boolean constructor)
at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.UnsafeInvokeInternal(Object obj, Object[] parameters, Object[] arguments)
at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture)
at Sitecore.Reflection.ReflectionUtil.InvokeMethod(MethodInfo method, Object[] parameters, Object obj)
at Sitecore.Jobs.JobRunner.RunMethod(JobArgs args)
at (Object , Object )
at Sitecore.Pipelines.CorePipeline.Run(PipelineArgs args)
at Sitecore.Pipelines.DefaultCorePipelineManager.Run(String pipelineName, PipelineArgs args, String pipelineDomain, Boolean failIfNotExists)
at Sitecore.Pipelines.DefaultCorePipelineManager.Run(String pipelineName, PipelineArgs args, String pipelineDomain)
at Sitecore.Jobs.Job.DoExecute()
at Sitecore.Jobs.Job.ThreadEntry(Object state)

Nested Exception

Exception: SolrNet.Exceptions.SolrConnectionException
Message: The underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly.
Source: SolrNet
at SolrNet.Impl.SolrConnection.PostStream(String relativeUrl, String contentType, Stream content, IEnumerable1 parameters) at SolrNet.Impl.SolrConnection.Post(String relativeUrl, String s) at SolrNet.Impl.SolrBasicServer1.SendAndParseHeader(ISolrCommand cmd)
at Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider.SolrBatchUpdateContext.AddRange(IEnumerable1 group, Int32 groupSize) at Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider.SolrBatchUpdateContext.Commit() at Sitecore.ContentSearch.AbstractSearchIndex.PerformUpdate(IEnumerable1 indexableInfo, IndexingOptions indexingOptions)

Nested Exception

Exception: System.Net.WebException
Message: The underlying connection was closed: The connection was closed unexpectedly.
Source: System
at System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetResponse()
at HttpWebAdapters.Adapters.HttpWebRequestAdapter.GetResponse()
at SolrNet.Impl.SolrConnection.GetResponse(IHttpWebRequest request)

This was happening on each CRUD operation — Which is logical. As you know Sitecore triggers partial index rebuild on each CRUD operation. We invested huge amount of hours on this and then finally, we learnt that Solr and ZK servers were not running on HTTPS. How to find and fix that? Here we go:

  1. You go to each of your ZK files and make sure your ZK Configurations are correct – Especially hostnames, and respective entries should be there in host files and make sure ZK is registered to run on HTTPS (See Step #7 – zkcli -zkhost “10.100.1.10:2181,10.100.1.11:2181,10.100.1.12:2181” -cmd clusterprop -name urlScheme -val https) : https://github.com/ivanbuzyka/Sitecore.SolrCloudConfiguration/wiki/3.-Install-Zookeeper-as-a-service
  2. Make sure your Solr is configured to run on HTTPS — Two things to check Solr hostname (SOLR_HOST – They should be different for each Solr) and Certificate entries.
  3. Make sure ports and firewalls are open : https://github.com/ivanbuzyka/Sitecore.SolrCloudConfiguration/wiki/Ports-and-firewalls-etc
  4. Few troubleshooting tips : it is hard to pin point SolrCloud challenges. Following tips might help you in that.
    1. Run each SolrCloud and ZK Instance separately — Which means don’t do ensemble mode. Just have one Solr and ZK entry and run it. Start ZK and Solr using Command prompt. So, you can see what’s going on behind the scenes – Few commands:
      1. solr start -cloud -p 8983 -z “10.100.1.11:2181” -f – To run Single Solr with ZK. Make sure your ZK has only single entry and is up and running. Open individual Solr URL and ensure it works in isolated mode.Do this for each instance and if all good, then and only then run it in isolated mode. When you run in ensemble mode. Look for Leader and follower values in command prompt : http://amrutbudihal.blogspot.com/2012/07/zookeeper-leader-election-and-group.htmlCommon problem – Which I have seen is – ZK is not registered to run in HTTPS mode — (Which happens from this command : zkcli -zkhost “10.100.1.10:2181,10.100.1.11:2181,10.100.1.12:2181” -cmd clusterprop -name urlScheme -val https). How to check ZK is running in HTTPS mode or not?: (Good reference : https://www.searchstax.com/docs/hc/zkcli-zookeeper-searchstax.html)
        1. Execute “zkcli.bat -z “ZKIP:ZKPORT” -cmd list from one of the server – As shown below and look for “urlScheme” value. if your ZK is on HTTPS. Then you should see HTTPS here. Do it for all other ZK. This command also ensures your network and firewall is allowing communication between each ZK nodes.†

Scenario #2

After fixing above error, noticed following error in log file:

2019-03-30T15:16:37 PID[7596] Error 18068 15:16:37 ERROR The remote name could not be resolved: ‘uat1-solrcloud.scbasics.com’
Exception: SolrNet.Exceptions.SolrConnectionException
Message: The remote name could not be resolved: ‘uat1-solrcloud.scbasics.com’
Source: SolrNet
at SolrNet.Impl.SolrConnection.Get(String relativeUrl, IEnumerable1 parameters) at SolrNet.Impl.SolrCoreAdmin.Status(String coreName) at Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrNetExtension.Cloud.DefaultReplicaStatusProvider.GetReplicaStatus(Replica replica) at Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider.SolrCloudIndexSummary.GetReplicaIndex(Replica replica) at System.Linq.Enumerable.<>c__DisplayClass7_03.b__0(TSource x)
at System.Linq.Enumerable.WhereSelectEnumerableIterator2.MoveNext() at System.Linq.Enumerable.Sum(IEnumerable1 source)
at Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider.SolrCloudIndexSummary.get_NumberOfDocuments()
at Sitecore.ContentSearch.Client.Forms.IndexingManagerWizard.BuildIndexCheckbox(String name, String header, ListString selected, ListString indexMap)

Nested Exception

Exception: System.Net.WebException
Message: The remote name could not be resolved: ‘uat1-solrcloud.scbasics.com’

Luckily this one was easy, This is known issue and don’t have any functional impact, It will not show you document count etc. Information in Sitecore indexing manager : https://sitecore.stackexchange.com/questions/8263/object-reference-error-in-sitecore-contentsearch-solrprovider-solrindexsummary-g

In Summary, As all other things ZK and SolrCloud are not rocket science. You just need to know right tools, right commands, right mindset and above all great patience to troubleshoot this. Hope this post helps you go home on time!

Thanks to my colleague Abhishek from whom I learnt few of these things and Thanks to Google as well!

Filed under Search API, Sitecore, SolrCloud, Troulbeshooting
0
June 10, 2019 / kiranpatils

Cache Tuner V2

Hello Everyone, Sorry for being away for a while. I got busy due to personal and professional commitments. But I’m back with lot of new learnings which I’ve planned to share with you.

Cache Tuner is one of my favorite modules [Widely accepted and appreciated by Sitecore community – Thanks for your appreciation, It motivates me to work on weekend to update this module instead of watching India-Australia match 😉], and thought to update it to handle few of the following use cases:

  1. Sitecore 9.1 Compatible : As you know, Sitecore made big architectural changes in Version 8.2 to make Sitecore caching much more better and extensible. But it broke few tools like CacheTuner and so others. In December, updated Cache Tuner to use new API : https://sitecorebasics.wordpress.com/2018/12/25/sitecore-9-compatible-cache-tuner/ While I was working on Cache Tuner V2, Thought to validate it on my Sitecore 9.1 Instance to make sure it works — And it indeed works! So, I have done all my validation on Sitecore 9.1. So, you can try with your new 9.1 instance with confidence. But please remember – If you find something new, Please report it on github or create PR with fix 🙂
  2. Drill down cache and clear specific cache : Since childhood, I’ve been always curious to know – How stuff works? (I’m sure for most of you as well, that’s why you are in this field). Same has been true for Sitecore Caching as well. As you know Sitecore caching uses same structure like HashTable. Where you have Key – Value pair. Along with that, Sitecore also has nested Hashtable. Which means one Key’s Value will also have another hashtable with Key – Value. At times when you are troubleshooting caching challenges, You must have thought of this. Is this caching issue or not? And to do that, Usually, what you do is, Use Sitecore Admin cache page to clear all cache and if it fixes the issue. Then it’s caching issue else it is something else. Sounds similar? You can do this on lower environment. But what if you must do same thing on production environment? During that you must be thinking. What If:
    1. I can see what’s inside each cache entry e.g. Click on YOURSITE[HTML] and see whether component which you are trying to troubleshoot exists or not in that list. I can clear specific Cache instead of FULL Cache e.g. You can just clear YOURSITE[HTML] cache and see whether it fixes your issues or not, Without affecting other caches. If you got excited and say — I know there’s module in marketplace which does exactly same thing – Then I would say cool down, as I also had same excitement, with this module : https://marketplace.sitecore.net/en/Modules/S/Sitecore_Cache_Admin.aspx Which I used a lot, And would like to Thanks this Module Admin. As this feature of Cache Tuner V2 is inspired from this module. But this module is not updated to support new Caching API Changes. Now, All above things are possible with CacheTunerV2 — I believe, This feature will be super helpful to community. And I’m excited to know your feedback on this.
  3. Clear all cache : Instead of relying on Cache Admin page, you can do it using CacheTuner page [Note : Please make sure you delete your cache tuner page, as soon as you are done with your Caching Tuning and troubleshooting. As CacheTuner page is not yet secure page]

Sounds exciting? And curios to know more about this. Let’s do it:

Screenshots:

Clear all Button
If Cache key has value, Then it will be clickable. If you would like to drill down and see what’s inside — please click desired cache key. Which will open Cache Detail page in new window with details of clicked cache key.
Cache detail page for website[html] cache key looks like this. #1 – Shows total number of cache entries stored in clicked cache, #2 – Cache details – In this example it is showing you how HTML Cache is getting stored for each component. #3 – Using “Clear Me!” button you can click particular cache. In this example website[html]

How to use it?

  1. Download from Cache Tuner V2 release : https://github.com/klpatil/CacheTuner/tree/CacheTunerV2 (Take a note of CacheTunerV2 branch and you can refer Release section : https://github.com/klpatil/CacheTuner/releases/tag/CTV2.0)
  2. Copy it under your desired folder. I recommend to have everything under CTV2 folder e.g. Webroot/MyTools/CTV2/* (All Cache Tuner v2 files in same folder)
  3. Access Cache Tuner V2 as per your copied folder e.g. https://<mysite>/mytools/ctv2/cachetuner.aspx
  4. That’s it – Fix you Caching issue and go home, your loved ones are waiting for you!

Hope you found this useful, There are few useful features in my roadmap. Thought to share with you. In case, you want to contribute to module.

Future release:

  1. Add Authorization
  2. Drill down cache details for all types, as of now it only supports few caching types only. And it should handle most of the use cases.
  3. Clear specific cache entry – As of now you can’t clear specific cache entry. You can clear specific cache container. e.g Instead of clearing website[html] would like to have a feature to clear cache entry which is inside website[html]
  4. Anything I missed? I’m all ears!

Old links:

https://sitecorebasics.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/cache-tuner-user-guide/

Thank you so much for reading!

Filed under Caching, Shared Source Module, Sitecore, Troulbeshooting
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