Sitecore 10 comes with a new Dataprovider which merges items from disk and the database. Jeremy Davis already wrote a great article about this. Sitecore is using this new approach by deploying all their items through an Item Resource file.
TDS now also supports creating item resource files, which makes it convenient to deploy your own items this way too. There are a few uncommon scenarios where this will result in a uncaught NullReferenceException, for example when there is an item without a version. Many areas of Sitecore and your custom solution will most likely be broken if this happens. The stack trace will look something like this:
FATAL Uncaught application error
Exception: System.NullReferenceException
Message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source: Sitecore.Kernel
at Sitecore.Data.DataProviders.CompositeDataProvider.GetItemVersions(ItemDefinition itemDefinition, CallContext context)
at Sitecore.Data.DataProviders.DataProvider.GetItemVersions(ItemDefinition item, CallContext context, DataProviderCollection providers)
at Sitecore.Data.DataSource.LoadVersions(ItemDefinition definition, Language language)
at Sitecore.Data.DataSource.GetVersions(ItemInformation itemInformation, Language language)
at Sitecore.Data.DataSource.GetLatestVersion(ItemInformation itemInformation, Language language)
at Sitecore.Data.DataSource.GetItemData(ID itemID, Language language, Version version)
at Sitecore.Nexus.Data.DataCommands.GetItemCommand.GetItem(ID itemId, Language language, Version version, Database database)
One way to solve this is by identifying all the items which cause the issue and fix each of them. Another way it to override the CompositeDataProvider and wrap a try/catch block around this logic. The advantage of this approach is that it addresses the root cause and the issue will not reoccur in the future. Following code can be used to catch the exception:
using Sitecore.Collections;
using Sitecore.Configuration;
using Sitecore.Data;
using Sitecore.Data.DataProviders;
using Sitecore.Data.DataProviders.ReadOnly;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace Foundation.Providers
{
public class SafeCompositeDataProvider : CompositeDataProvider
{
public SafeCompositeDataProvider(IEnumerable<ReadOnlyDataProvider> readOnlyDataProviders, DataProvider headProvider) : base(readOnlyDataProviders, headProvider) { }
public SafeCompositeDataProvider(ObjectList readOnlyDataProviders, DataProvider headProvider) : base(readOnlyDataProviders, headProvider) { }
public override VersionUriList GetItemVersions(ItemDefinition itemDefinition, CallContext context)
{
try
{
return base.GetItemVersions(itemDefinition, context);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Log.Error($"SafeCompositeDataProvider: Caught exception for item {itemDefinition.ID} {itemDefinition.Name} {ex}", this);
return null;
}
}
}
}
This new provider can be patched in through a configuration file like this:
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/" xmlns:set="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/set/" xmlns:role="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/role/">
<sitecore>
<databases >
<!-- target to CM or standalone, no master database in CD-->
<database id="master" role:require="ContentManagement or StandAlone">
<dataProviders >
<dataProvider >
<patch:attribute name="type">Foundation.Providers.SafeCompositeDataProvider, Foundation.Providers</patch:attribute>
</dataProvider>
</dataProviders>
</database>
</databases>
</sitecore>
</configuration>
Jeroen's Sitecore Blog 