How to diagnose the «Call to a member function setActive() on boolean in Magento/Backend/Model/View/Result/Page.php» failure?

dmitrii_fediuk · July 17, 2017, 6:37pm

The problem method is \Magento\Backend\Model\View\Result\Page::setActiveMenu():

magento/magento2/blob/2.2.0-RC1.4/app/code/Magento/Backend/Model/View/Result/Page.php#L16-L33


/**
 * Define active menu item in menu block
 *
 * @param string $itemId current active menu item
 * @return $this
 */
public function setActiveMenu($itemId)
{
    /** @var $menuBlock \Magento\Backend\Block\Menu */
    $menuBlock = $this->layout->getBlock('menu');
    $menuBlock->setActive($itemId);
    $parents = $menuBlock->getMenuModel()->getParentItems($itemId);
    foreach ($parents as $item) {
        /** @var $item \Magento\Backend\Model\Menu\Item */
        $this->getConfig()->getTitle()->prepend($item->getTitle());
    }
    return $this;
}

Loot at the lines:

github.com

magento/magento2/blob/2.2.0-RC1.4/app/code/Magento/Backend/Model/View/Result/Page.php#L24-L26


/** @var $menuBlock \Magento\Backend\Block\Menu */
$menuBlock = $this->layout->getBlock('menu');
$menuBlock->setActive($itemId);

The «Call to a member function setActive() on boolean» means that the $this->layout->getBlock('menu') code returns false: the menu block is absent.

menu is a standard block, it definitely should present in the layout, and its absence usually means that the layout is broken.
In my practice, it always was caused by an invalid XML file.
Here is my latest case:

github.com

mage2pro/core/blob/2.8.19/Catalog/view/base/layout/default.xml#L1-L7


<?xml version='1.0'?>
<page xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance' layout='checkout'
	  xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation='urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd'>
	<head>
		<css src='Df_Catalog::main.css'/>
	</head>
</page>

This layout is invalid, because the layout='checkout' attribute is not allowed here and breaks Magento 2 backend with the «Call to a member function setActive() on boolean» message.

The correct version is:

github.com

mage2pro/core/blob/2.8.20/Catalog/view/base/layout/default.xml#L1-L8


<?xml version='1.0'?>
<page
	xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'
	xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation='urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd'>
	<head>
		<css src='Df_Catalog::main.css'/>
	</head>
</page>

So how to detect the problem XML file?
You can detect it by a sequential disabling the installed third-party modules in the app/etc/config.php file.