Nulls returned for varybyculture fields

[smarshallsay]

Which Umbraco version are you using? (Please write the exact version, example: 10.1.0)

12.2.0

Bug summary

Null instead of actual value being returned on varybyculture fields

Specifics

One of our websites has many cultures. If I upgrade that website past 11.2.2 (even the very next version 11.3.0) then I get null reference exceptions when I try to access certain values whether or not they have a value set.
In my case the first erroring value is a bool (true/false) set on a page inherited from a composition

although the values are returned in the non-public members _content

Steps to reproduce

I'll try not to be too confusing here but this is on a page that inherits 'modules' data type from a base composition which is varybyculture nested content which allows certain modules that also inherit from a base module composition type that receive these fields such as 'fullbleed' etc

The website was originally created on umbraco 9 beta but has been steadily upgraded through almost every version in its lifetime until we hit this version and started receiving these null reference errors.

Expected result / actual result

Expected: Value saved in CMS to be returned

Actual: Null reference exception

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This item has been added to our backlog AB#34580

[github-actions]

Hi there @smarshallsay!

Firstly, a big thank you for raising this issue. Every piece of feedback we receive helps us to make Umbraco better.

We really appreciate your patience while we wait for our team to have a look at this but we wanted to let you know that we see this and share with you the plan for what comes next.

• We'll assess whether this issue relates to something that has already been fixed in a later version of the release that it has been raised for.
• If it's a bug, is it related to a release that we are actively supporting or is it related to a release that's in the end-of-life or security-only phase?
• We'll replicate the issue to ensure that the problem is as described.
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We wish we could work with everyone directly and assess your issue immediately but we're in the fortunate position of having lots of contributions to work with and only a few humans who are able to do it. We are making progress though and in the meantime, we will keep you in the loop and let you know when we have any questions.

Thanks, from your friendly Umbraco GitHub bot 🤖 🙂

[Zeegaan]

Hello there, sorry you're having isses with this 🐛
It is indeed a bit confusing for me to reproduce, as I'm not quite sure what setup I need.
Could you provide me some steps from a clean install, so I can reproduce this ? 🙏

[argentini]

@Zeegaan the problem appears to be with compositions in a multilingual site. When the composition is set to vary by culture, only properties that are also set to vary by culture will work in razor. The other properties return null in razor. I've been testing in Umbraco CMS 12.3.

[andr317c]

Hey! Thanks for clarifying the reproduction steps.😄 I took a look at the issue, and I was able to reproduce the issue on version 12.3.0. However, I couldn't reproduce it in versions 10.7.0, 12.0.0, 12.1.0, and 12.2.0. This suggests that the issue was introduced between versions 12.2.0 and 12.3.0.

GIF of 12.2.0:

GIF of 12.3.0:

Since this is a regression I will go ahead and mark this issue as a sprint-candidate!

[smarshallsay]

Actually that may be a different issue to what we experienced as I have managed to reproduce it. In a prior version of Umbraco the coder was having troubles casting a page to a composition type in order to access the varybyculture properties strongly typed, so the code read
var moduleBase = new BaseModule(Model.Module, null)
Which in versions up to 11.2.2 worked and the properties could be accessed, so we thought nothing of it. In any tested version after this resulted in nulls for those properties. Upgrading to 12.2.0 and the null issue still exists but the following cast does work:
(BaseModule)Model.Module
So it was a different issue we had, but I can verify upgrading the fully functional 12.2.0 website to 12.3.0 site does indeed break it in the ways you mention in your reproduction

[kjac]

Hi @smarshallsay,

Is this a duplicate of #15117 at this point?