SPE Remote Script Call Nullreference Exception

Question

Situation

I'm trying to use the SPE Web API to call a simple script to publish 1 single item from gulp (in SXA Theme). The script URL call looks like this:

/-/script/v2/master/PublishItem?user=mypersonaluser&password=xxx&itemPath=/sitecore/media library/Themes/Portal/sass/main

Problem

When the call executes I receive a 500 error response with the following stacktrace:

15648 2018:04:13 16:46:48 ERROR Application error.
Exception: System.NullReferenceException
Message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source: mscorlib
   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add)
   at Cognifide.PowerShell.Core.Settings.Authorization.ServiceAuthorizationManager.GetServiceAuthorizationInfo(String serviceName)
   at Cognifide.PowerShell.Core.Settings.Authorization.ServiceAuthorizationManager.IsUserAuthorized(String serviceName, String userName)
   at Cognifide.PowerShell.Console.Services.RemoteScriptCall.ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStepImpl(IExecutionStep step)
   at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

Observations

On request of Adam I already checked my showconfig.aspx and the section for my restfulv2 looks like this:

<restfulv2 requireSecureConnection="false" patch:source="Gulp.config" enabled="true">
    <authorization>
        <add Permission="Allow" IdentityType="Role" Identity="sitecore\PowerShell Extensions Remoting"/>
        <add name="AdminRule" Permission="Allow" IdentityType="Role" Identity="sitecore\IsAdministrator" patch:source="Gulp.config"/>
        <!--add Permission="Allow" IdentityType="User" Identity="extranet\Anonymous" /-->
        <add Permission="Allow" IdentityType="User" Identity="sitecore\admin"/>
    </authorization>
</restfulv2>

Additionally this only shows up on the first call

Question

Why am I receiving this exception?

Answer 1

Potential fix scheduled for release with SPE 5.0.

There are appears to be a concurrency issue in SPE that may be addressed with issue 997.

Example: The following warms up the Sitecore instance and then immediately invokes the Web API. I used the following script to duplicate the error.

Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Uri "http://sc827/sitecore/service/keepalive.aspx" | Select-Object -ExpandProperty StatusDescription

$jobs = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()
foreach($index in 1..5) {
    $job = Start-Job -ScriptBlock {
        $url = "http://sc827/-/script/v2/master/DoSomething?user=admin&password=b"
        Invoke-WebRequest -UseBasicParsing -Uri $url | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Content
    }

    $jobs.Add($job) > $null
}

$jobs | Wait-Job
$jobs | Receive-Job

Note: The proposed fix converts a dictionary into a ConcurrentDictionary.