Collection widget not working / invisible

[BennyB]

Dear community,

I am experiencing an issue with the Collection widget on our development system. I have a Mashup using Collection widget and it worked fine for several months. From one day to the next the Collection widget (or rather its content) was not visible anymore, the space is simply empty. I have not changed any settings or anything else on the server or environment but cannot 100% guarantee that none of my coworkers changed anything.

• The Collection widget does not work on any Mashup. I created a new one from scratch, same behavior.
• This only occurs on the dev system, so far no test or prod system is affected. I exported the working version of the Mashup from prod back to dev - still empty.
• The bound data is for sure NOT the issue, the good old repeater is working like a charme using the same data source.
• I observed a similar behavior in the beginning of our project when you first have to check "Enable Beta Mashup Features" on PlatformSubsystem -> Configuration. But this cannot be the problem because other Beta features (like the Tab) are still working well. Nevertheless I even tried to uncheck, save, check, save and test again with no result.
• At the moment I can only test on Chrome (78) and no other browser due to another issue on our dev system.
• We are running ThingWorx 8.4.4-b2319 on all systems. I would like to avoid an upgrade if possible, especially because it once worked fine and still is on all other systems.
• I have not seen any error message, neither in ApplicationLog nor in Chrome Console.
• I haven't found any related topic in the community. The closest was this thread but changing the item load behavior did not change anything. I also tried randomly changing all other properties - no change
• I attached the latest version of my Mashup but testing is difficult without the supporting Services.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Benny

[posipova]

Could you please also upload the mashup that is referenced in the Collection widget and PlantViewServices thing? Likely some parameter or json string got messed up somehow so it's not populating properly.

[BennyB]

Hello @posipova and thanks for your feedback.

I could do this but it would not help in any way. It was even pointless to attach my PlantViewMashup imho. I can use

• an arbitrary Mashup with Collection widget
• an arbitrary reference Mashup for Collection widget
• an arbitrary data source

and it will not show anything. The PlantViewMashup was just accidentally the first Mashup where I noticed my issue. As stated the Repeater is working just fine.

My best guess is some setting somewhere in Thingworx, Tomcat or the database (SQL Server btw) as exactly the same setup is working on other servers, proved by Export-Import.

[slangley]

Hi @BennyB.

We recommend checking for any third party or custom extensions that may contain conflicting libraries.  If you are unable to track down the cause, we recommend opening a case.  I would be happy to do so on your behalf.

Regards.

--Sharon

[BennyB]

Hello Sharon / @slangley,

we are indeed using several libraries, from my point of view none of them should cause conflicts. We have a few extensions built ourselves, without any additional libraries. The rest is taken from marketplace or github, namingly:

• Autocomplete
• BMCoreUI
• BMView_ExtensionPackage
• CSVParser_Extensions
• DiffViewer
• ExportPlatformExt_Extension
• GoogleWidgets_ExtensionPackage
• InfoTableSelector_ExtensionPackage
• MSSQL_ExtensionPackage
• ProgressGauge_ExtensionPackage

I will try to temporarily remove some of the extensions to rebuild the test/prod environment, everything still works there. Only if that fails I would like to open a case.

Thanks for your support.

[BennyB · Accepted solution]

Jackpot! Thanks a lot Sharon / @slangley .

The answer is BMCore, version 2.5.2 (from iot github), is apparently conflicting with Collection widget. This is reproducible, uninstalling the extension fixes my issue. Importing the extension leads to an invisible Collection again.

Since we are not using the latest Thingworx version but 8.4.4 I cannot give a general statement but at least this combination does not work. I would be curious if that is also the case for the later versions, this may be of interest for the development of the extension or even also Thingworx.

Thanks again, makes my day.

[slangley]

Hi @BennyB.

I'm glad you found the cause of the problem.  Thank you for providing an update on the issue and marking the Accepted Solution.

Regards.