Unable to process request due to broken reference
Platform Notice: Data Center - This article applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.
Note that this knowledge base article was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center knowledge base articles for non-Data Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Cause
Any leftover or corrupted data in the database/index can cause this problem. When saving a page/blog, for example, if there is a broken/missing reference, Confluence can't process the request and is unable to update its content.
How to Identify the broken reference
After the request attempt is processed, the application will register its failed entry in the application logs (atlassian-confluence.log). Below is an example:
2017-11-02 12:34:51,801 ERROR [http-nio-8090-exec-51] [common.error.jersey.ThrowableExceptionMapper] toResponse Uncaught exception thrown by REST service: Could not unmarshal a link in the editor.
-- referer: https://localhost/pages/resumedraft.action?draftId=61983731&draftShareId=580c8481-a6b0-458d-b2d5-107c21f4f7af | url: /rest/tinymce/1/drafts | traceId: 085a780d5a65d490 | userName: Alalik Ciastes
com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.link.CannotUnmarshalLinkException: Could not unmarshal a link in the editor.
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.link.EditorLinkUnmarshaller.unmarshal(EditorLinkUnmarshaller.java:124)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.link.EditorLinkUnmarshaller.unmarshal(EditorLinkUnmarshaller.java:37)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.UnmarshalMarshalFragmentTransformer.transform(UnmarshalMarshalFragmentTransformer.java:28)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.transformers.DefaultFragmentTransformer.transformFragment(DefaultFragmentTransformer.java:141)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.transformers.DefaultFragmentTransformer.transform(DefaultFragmentTransformer.java:123)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.EditorXhtmlTransformer.transform(EditorXhtmlTransformer.java:45)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.TransformerChain.transform(TransformerChain.java:33)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.TransformerChain.transform(TransformerChain.java:33)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.PluggableTransformerChain.transform(PluggableTransformerChain.java:39)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.DefaultEditorConverter.convert(DefaultEditorConverter.java:37)
Caused by: com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.model.resource.identifiers.CannotResolveResourceIdentifierException: Unable to resolve the resource identifier IdAndTypeResourceIdentifier[id=61965843,type=userinfo]
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.model.resource.identifiers.IdAndTypeResourceIdentifierResolver.resolve(IdAndTypeResourceIdentifierResolver.java:50)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.model.resource.identifiers.IdAndTypeResourceIdentifierResolver.resolve(IdAndTypeResourceIdentifierResolver.java:20)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.resource.identifiers.IdAndTypeAnalyzingResourceIdentifierUnmarshaller.unmarshal(IdAndTypeAnalyzingResourceIdentifierUnmarshaller.java:60)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.resource.identifiers.IdAndTypeAnalyzingResourceIdentifierUnmarshaller.unmarshal(IdAndTypeAnalyzingResourceIdentifierUnmarshaller.java:26)
at com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.editor.link.EditorLinkUnmarshaller.unmarshal(EditorLinkUnmarshaller.java:74)
... 317 moreIn the caused by, you will find the problem:
Caused by: com.atlassian.confluence.content.render.xhtml.model.resource.identifiers.CannotResolveResourceIdentifierException: Unable to resolve the resource identifier IdAndTypeResourceIdentifier[id=61965843,type=userinfo]As we can see: id=61965843,type=userinfo, the issue is caused by a userinfo entry in the CONTENT table.
Diagnosis
For versions prior to 6.15.1, this can be caused by the following bug:
In this case, we recommend upgrading to prevent this issue from re-occurring. However, upgrading won't resolve drafts with broken references, so this can be resolved by creating a new page with the same content.
Resolution
To remove the broken reference in the drafts:
- Create a new page
- Copy the content from this draft to the new page
- Save the new page
- Remove the page with broken references