Neo Block Loses Hierarchy when entry is trashed and then restored

[brianrivet-tilt]

Bug Description

I have a site where a user deleted a page by mistake. The page uses a Neo field for its page builder. When the page was restored, all of the Neo blocks lose their hierarchy and get put at the top level, with some of the nested blocks even disappearing entirely.

I have a backup of the database with the pages intact, but every time I attempt to restore the backup, the content loses hierarchy again with the same blocks going missing.

If need be, I can provide the backups of each for comparison.

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a page with Neo blocks.
2. Delete the page
3. Restore it

Expected behaviour

The pages should not be losing their content hierarchy nor should they lose blocks, but should be restored entirely. In any case, a restore of the database backup should be rendering the data correctly and it isn't.

Neo version

3.8.6

Craft CMS version

4.5.5

What is the affected Neo field's propagation method?

No response

Does this issue involve templating, and if so, is eager-loading used?

This is not a templating issue

[brianrivet-tilt]

Correction, there are no missing blocks, but all of the blocks are in the field at the top level regardless of whether they are supposed to be able to be there or not.

[ttempleton]

This was fixed in 3.9.0 (749e6c1). Unfortunately the bug took effect when the entry was trashed, so the block hierarchy would need to be recreated at that point.

[brianrivet-tilt]

Thanks. We may need to revisit this. I updated Craft and Neo to 4.7.1 and 4.0.3 respectively on my local (the DB on my local was from a backup done before the entries were deleted, so the Neo blocks were intact). I then pushed the updates to the production site and then replaced the DB with a backup from my local. I would have expected that the entries would have returned to normal and been intact as they are on my local copy of the site, but when I view the entries in question after the backup restore they still show no content. I'm going to recreate the blocks manually because I need to get this resolved, but I don't know that the problem is entirely fixed.

[ttempleton]

If possible, could you please send that database backup and your composer files to [email protected] and let us know of an entry this is happening with, and we'll have a look.

[brianrivet-tilt]

I've sent the files you requested. Let me know if you do not receive them or if you need anything else from me. Thanks!

[ttempleton]

Thanks for sending that. When starting from before the entries were deleted, deleting and then restoring them works as expected for me.

I might have misread your previous comment though; when you restored the database to the production environment, the Neo fields on those entries were broken in that environment without having deleted and restored them, but the fields were all intact with the same database content on your local environment? If so, I'm wondering if there was some weird caching issue going on.

[brianrivet-tilt]

No problem. Let me recap because what you got from the comment was incorrect. I restored the 4.5.5 database to the server before running the upgrades. The posts are intact there and there was no problem with them, but then after running the upgrade they showed up as damaged again. I don't know if the damage happens when the database is restored or what, but my local copy of the site (4.5.50 showed no damage so that was where I pulled the backup from that I used to do the restore.

[ttempleton]

Ah, okay, those were the steps that I took with your database. I'm not really sure why it worked fine for me and not you, maybe there's an environmental issue of some kind. I'll keep this issue open for a while in case it happens again with another entry or if anyone else has the same issue.

[joshparylak]

Has anyone experienced this in situations other than trashing entries?

I have a client who is experiencing issues where saves will sometimes result in top level content blocks going missing and the child blocks ending up at the top level. I'm trying to track down root causes and right now what I'm seeing is frustratingly intermittent.

[ttempleton]

@joshparylak Is that on Craft 4 or 5?

If you update to the latest version (4.2.17 for Craft 4, 5.2.10 for Craft 5) and run php craft gc/run, does that resolve the issue?

[joshparylak]

@ttempleton Craft 4.12.3, Neo 4.12.13.

Will that restore broken hierarchy or just help prevent the problem from re-occurring in the future?

[ttempleton]

That will hopefully prevent it from re-occurring in the future, but please let me know if it happens again.