Programmatically moving variation to product as parent has error

Programmatically moving variation to product as parent has error "Parent of a node must be another node or a catalog."

Matthew Boniface

Vote:

I've got some logic that sometimes has to move a variation to beneath a product, I have code that looks like this:

contentRepository.Move(variation.ContentLink, product.ContentLink, AccessLevel.NoAccess, AccessLevel.NoAccess);

Unfortunately it throws this error whenever it does this:

System.InvalidOperationException: Parent of a node must be another node or a catalog.
 at EPiServer.Commerce.Catalog.Provider.Internal.CatalogContentMoveHandler.GetNewParent(ContentReference newParentLink, Int32& newParentNodeId, Int32& newCatalogId)
 at EPiServer.Commerce.Catalog.Provider.Internal.CatalogContentMoveHandler.SetParentNodeForEntry(ContentReference contentLink, ContentReference newParentLink)
 at EPiServer.Commerce.Catalog.Provider.Internal.CatalogContentMoveHandler.MoveWithTransaction(Action`2 moveMethod, ContentReference contentLink, ContentReference newParentLink)
 at EPiServer.Core.Internal.DefaultContentRepository.Move(ContentReference contentLink, ContentReference destinationLink, AccessLevel requiredSourceAccess, AccessLevel requiredDestinationAccess)
 at FOO.BAR.Web.Features.Products.Import.ProductImportJob.ImportProducts(ImportProductsRootModel productsRootModel, ErpSystem erpSystem, ContentReference productsCatalogLink) in C:\Dev\FOOBAR\src\FOO.BAR.Web\Fea
tures\Products\Import\ProductImportJob.cs:line 539

From digging around, it seems there might be a bug in the CatalogContentMoveHandler.. It seems to have two separate methods for handling the move of a entry vs node, but then both of those methods use the same GetNewParent private method which has a switch statement for the destination content type to only be CatalogNode or Catalog, otherwise throws the above error..

Is there a bug, or am I using this wrong?

We're on Commerce v11.8.5 (latest v11.x version)

#198611

Nov 01, 2018 6:37

Quan Mai

Vote:

You can't move a variant to a product. If you want to assign a variant to a product, you would have to use IRelationRepository to save a new ProductVariation relation

            var relation = new ProductVariation();
            relation.Parent = Product.ContentLink;
            relation.Child = Variant.ContentLink;
            _relationRepository.UpdateRelation(relation);

#198617

Nov 01, 2018 9:03

Matthew Boniface

Vote:

Hi Quan

Hmm, it seems contrary to creating a new variation which you can have the product as its parent:

var newVariation = contentRepository.GetDefault<MyVariation>(productLink);

And also in the UI, it seems to support this also:

Oh and additionally the context menu to create a new variation under the product is offered too:

Are you sure it shouldn't be possible to move a variant to under a product?

#198873

Nov 08, 2018 7:21

Quan Mai

Vote:

Good question. But the UI does not have to reflect the API 100%. It is used to make sure the life for editors as easy and as productive as possible. As a developer you should understand the underlying implementation and go with it.

#198874

Nov 08, 2018 7:30

Matthew Boniface

Vote:

Hi Quan, sure but the creation content API does allow putting a variation under a product.. And from noseying around the catalog content provider's move logic, I think it might just be a simple bug - looks like they prepared it to handle move of entries versus nodes differently but then just applied the same check anyway.. Feels like a mistake to me.

#198875

Edited, Nov 08, 2018 7:32

Quan Mai

Vote:

The API example you showed just set the ParentLink to the product. It will not work if you call GetChildren on the product or GetAncestors on the variants. I would say that is the inconsistency but sometimes we don't bother to check those conditions

#198876

Nov 08, 2018 7:39

Matthew Boniface

Vote:

I'll take your wisdom over mine :) But definitely wasn't intuitive behavior for the move logic for me.

#198877

Nov 08, 2018 7:41

Quan Mai

Vote:

I realized we can make it a little better by having a better exception message, "Parent of a node must be another node or a catalog." is not exactly correct in this case :)

#198883

Nov 08, 2018 8:36