Sidekick Loosing Track of Allowed Components

[pakram]

Before I start, here are some possibly helpful environment specs.

• AEM 6.0 SP2
• Java 1.7.0_71 64bit
• Mac OS 10.9
• Chrome 43

I have been doing a lot of QA as of late and noticed a strange issue with the Sidekick. I haven't been able to track the issue down and hope someone here knows the root cause.

As I am adding content and testing components I have noticed on several occasions (more than a few dozen) the Sidekick will loose track of the allowed components. There are two different symptoms and I will explain them both. 

1) The sidekick looses track of all components allowed on the page. The Sidekick's components list will be completely blank. I then have to enter design mode, add all the components back to the list, and go back to edit mode. I have resorted to backing up the /etc/designs/SiteName/content.xml and uploading it once the issue happens. 

2) On some occasions, the sidekick will have components in the list but I cannot drag them into the desired parsys. (usually the main page parsys) In this particular case, I assume this variant occurs because there are multiple parsys/iparsys on the page and only some (or just the main one) loose track of allowed components. 

After reading some similar posts from others I have tried to isolate the issue but not having any luck so far.

For example:

1. I checked for a conflicting version of jQuery, and or jQuery errors. Nothing relevant to the issue was present.
2. I also checked the error logs in the /crx-quickstart/logs/ folder but did not see anything generated. 
3. /etc/designs/SiteName/content is present, but did observe that one of the layout nodes was missing when I downloaded the content.xml.
4. On some occasions I attributed the loss to the fact that a component may have been updated, causing an issue. Although some changes were just HTML or formatting changes, and not something likely to cause a major issue with the component. In some cases, the error occurred even when no component changes were made. 

So anyway, thanks for reading this, hope someone knows why this might be happening.

[Sham_HC]

Your symptoms indicate some how back end entry (ex:- at /etc/designs/default/jcr%3Acontent/<page component name>/<parsys node name>] ) is made to list of component hence the issue.  To fix it  Change the last modified date of design. Example at /etc/designs/geometrixx/jcr:content/@cq:lastModified to resolve the issue.

Make sure who ever is modfying from backend using curl or etc... to avoid it.

I have filled the issue to handle backend entry gracefully (CQ-41204)

[smacdonald2008]

When you perform this task:

The sidekick looses track of all components allowed on the page. The Sidekick's components list will be completely blank. I then have to enter design mode, add all the components back to the list, and go back to edit mode. I have resorted to backing up the /etc/designs/SiteName/content.xml and uploading it once the issue happens

After you do this - do you notice that the components are gone again? - If so - when? 

[pakram]

Think think I have a multi-part answer to your question. 

1. After I add the components back to the parsys from design mode they will appear in the list and I can use them as expected.
2. On a few very-very rare occasions they did not appear in the list despite checking them off in the list. Unfortunately I did not check logs for these occasions and chalked it up to some other hiccup and restarted the server. (In hindsight not the best approach but it seemed to work)
3. In the cases where I upload the /etc/designs/site/content.xml (my normal routine at this point) it always works. Refreshing the page after upload always fixes the issue. 

Hope this answers your question completely.

[smacdonald2008 · Accepted solution]

"On a few very-very rare occasions they did not appear in the list despite checking them off in the list"

THis is a bug - they should always appear on the sidekick when they are selected. If you see this - please file a ticket.  Talk with support and see if this is a known issue . 

[pakram]

"On a few very-very rare occasions they did not appear in the list despite checking them off in the list" 

This has been very rare, although I will follow up with Adobe on it.  However it's slightly less concerning to me at this point. I am more concerned that the templates will get handed off to the client and the issue will come up and we will need to support frequent loss of components within the sidekick. Is the frequent loss of components normal? Is it caused by a poorly written component? (it seams random at the moment) Anyone having issues outside of the development environment?