Custom facet data not being updated after initial flush to xDB

Question

What i want to do:

• Save and update facet data repeatedly through WebApi
• Read the facet data through WebApi

Everything works fine, until the contact stops being updated. It seems as if, once the inital flush to xDB has happened I will forever retrieve old data and it wont update either.

Saving the data, i'm doing this.

    public IHttpActionResult SaveContact([FromBody] dataFromView)
    {
        if (Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current != null && data != null)
        {
            var contact = Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.Current.Contact;
            if (contact != null)
            {

                ICalculatorData customfacet = Tracker.Current.Contact.GetFacet<ICustomFacet>("NameOfCustomFacet");


                if (customfacet != null)
                {                        
                   customfacet.someproperty = dataFromView.updatedproperty;                      
                };
            }                
            return Ok();
        }

        return BadRequest();
    }

The facet:

[Serializable]
    public class CustomFacet: Facet, ICustomFacet
    {      

        private const string SOMENUMBER= "SomeNumber";

        public decimal SomeNumber
        {
            get { return base.GetAttribute<decimal>(SOMENUMBER); }
            set { base.SetAttribute<decimal>(SOMENUMBER, value); }
        }


        public CustomFacet()
        {

            base.EnsureAttribute<decimal>(SOMENUMBER);
        }

    }

ICustomFacet

public interface ICustomFacet : IFacet
    {
 decimal SomeNumber { get; set; }
    }

I take the same approach when reading the data, only i'm just returning the customFacet instead.

If I clear my cookies and retrieve a new SC_ANALYTICS_GLOBAL_COOKIE id, i'll be able to again save and update the data. Until it keeps returning old data.

Edit: Log Exception: Sitecore.Analytics.Exceptions.ContactLockException Message: Failed to extend contact lease for contact 5d3ad09a-76af-4a3d-98b9-b448d4e3be14

This is happening on my development environment, working as both CM and CD

Anyone who can shed some light onto this issue?

Answer 1

Now that we know your issue is that you are hitting the MaxPageIndexThreshold limit. And that this is because of the API calls. You can find a nice way to make API calls be ignored from analytics, with a bit of code from Habitat. It's just an attribute for you controller actions. This will kill your API calls from being logged in xDB. When you API calls are in as "page" views, it trashes you path analyzer. Since there are hundreds of calls that do not actually correlate to the user's journey.

[HttpGet]
[SkipAnalyticsTrackingApi]
public ActionResult GetFooter()
{

}

This is the attribute

namespace Sitecore.Foundation.SitecoreExtensions.Attributes
{
    using System.Web.Mvc;
    using Sitecore.Analytics;

    public class SkipAnalyticsAjaxTrackingAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
    {
        public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
        {
            if (filterContext.RequestContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest() && Tracker.IsActive)
            {
                Tracker.Current?.CurrentPage?.Cancel();
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

As i'm using WebApi2 and not the one build into Sitecore, I had to modify Chris Auer's answer a bit to use the using System.Web.Http.Filters; instead of System.Web.Mvc. Here's the result.

using Sitecore.Analytics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web.Http.Filters;

public class SkipAnalyticsAjaxTrackingAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{

    public override void OnActionExecuted(HttpActionExecutedContext actionExecutedContext)
    {
        var isAjax = false;
        if (actionExecutedContext.Request.Headers.Contains("X-Requested-With"))
        {
            var requestedWith = actionExecutedContext.Request.Headers.GetValues("X-Requested-With").FirstOrDefault();
            if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(requestedWith)){

                isAjax = requestedWith.Equals("XMLHttpRequest");

            }
        }               
        if (isAjax && Tracker.IsActive)
        {
            Tracker.Current?.CurrentPage?.Cancel();
        }
        base.OnActionExecuted(actionExecutedContext);
    }
}