Updating from control panel occasionally yields error ”Call to a member function update() on null“

[furioursus]

I’m running the latest version of Scout (2.1.2) and Craft (3.3.15). If I submit my indices from the command line, they all process as normal and things seem to work just fine.

However, I find that some of my entries will fail when the authors attempt to update their entry in the control panel with the following stacktrace in queue.log:

2019-11-20 13:29:06 [-][1][-][error][Error] Error: Call to a member function update() on null in /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/rias/craft-scout/src/jobs/MakeSearchable.php:34
Stack trace:
#0 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/yiisoft/yii2-queue/src/Queue.php(214): rias\scout\jobs\MakeSearchable->execute(Object(craft\queue\Queue))
#1 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/yiisoft/yii2-queue/src/cli/Queue.php(147): yii\queue\Queue->handleMessage('34312', 'O:30:"rias\\scou...', '300', 1)
#2 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/craftcms/cms/src/queue/Queue.php(96): yii\queue\cli\Queue->handleMessage('34312', 'O:30:"rias\\scou...', '300', 1)
#3 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/craftcms/cms/src/controllers/QueueController.php(86): craft\queue\Queue->run()
#4 [internal function]: craft\controllers\QueueController->actionRun()
#5 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/yiisoft/yii2/base/InlineAction.php(57): call_user_func_array(Array, Array)
#6 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/yiisoft/yii2/base/Controller.php(157): yii\base\InlineAction->runWithParams(Array)
#7 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/craftcms/cms/src/web/Controller.php(187): yii\base\Controller->runAction('run', Array)
#8 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/yiisoft/yii2/base/Module.php(528): craft\web\Controller->runAction('run', Array)
#9 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/craftcms/cms/src/web/Application.php(299): yii\base\Module->runAction('queue/run', Array)
#10 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/craftcms/cms/src/web/Application.php(565): craft\web\Application->runAction('queue/run', Array)
#11 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/craftcms/cms/src/web/Application.php(278): craft\web\Application->_processActionRequest(Object(craft\web\Request))
#12 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/vendor/yiisoft/yii2/base/Application.php(386): craft\web\Application->handleRequest(Object(craft\web\Request))
#13 /Users/ckennedy/Sites/oaklandca.gov/web/index.php(21): yii\base\Application->run()
#14 /Users/ckennedy/.composer/vendor/laravel/valet/server.php(158): require('/Users/ckennedy...')
#15 {main}

In this example, I have disabled literally every field, facet, etc., in the index setup as shown here and flushed all the old settings dev_news which this should post to:

\rias\scout\ScoutIndex::create(getenv('ENVIRONMENT') . '_news')
  ->criteria(function (\craft\elements\db\EntryQuery $query) {
    return $query
      ->section(['news']);
  }),

I'm a bit stymied about how to proceed. I can alleviate the problem when it arises by updating the indices from the command line, and things work as normal, but that incurs a HUGE overhead of operations as the process touches literally every other section's index on the site.

Is there anything I might be missing here that needs to be set or declared?

[furioursus]

I’ll also add that if an entry will not save to the index with that error, I can save it as a new entry in Craft and the new entry will push to the index without a problem!

I’m also happy to provide our affected db if you need to troubleshoot at any point.

[khalwat]

So what's happening is here:

https://github.com/riasvdv/craft-scout/blob/master/src/jobs/MakeSearchable.php#L34

$engine can apparently come back as null. Without looking deeply into why, or whether that's by design, a simple fix we can probably do is change the execute() function to be:

    public function execute($queue)
    {
        if (!$element = $this->getElement()) {
            return;
        }

        $engine = $element->searchableUsing()->first(function (Engine $engine) {
            return $engine->scoutIndex->indexName === $this->indexName;
        });

        // Handle $engine coming back as null as per: https://github.com/riasvdv/craft-scout/issues/121 -- aaw/2020.01.02
        if (!$engine) {
            return;
        }

        $engine->update($element);

        if ($this->propagate) {
            $element->searchableRelations();
        }
    }

I can do a PR if you're still around @riasvdv -- probably just as easy for you to apply the fix tho, if you're up for it.

[riasvdv]

I'm so sorry, completely lost track of this issue, I've added this fix in 2.1.4