Error creating a user contact in the Sitecore XDb - solved

Recently, I had to deal with an issue related to the creation of a user’s contact in the Sitecore XDb, and wanted to share more details on how the problem was solved.

For some reason, the user creation process failed the first time, then, when the user tried to register again, the process failed at the following lines.

ERROR Error Happened while creating a user
Exception: System.InvalidOperationException
Message: An element with the specified key already exists.
Source: Sitecore.Analytics.Model
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Model.Framework.ModelDictionaryMember`1.Create(String key)
   at Sitecore.Analytics.Model.Framework.ModelDictionaryMember`1.ElementDictionary.Create(String key)
   at Sitecore.Commerce.Pipelines.Customers.CreateContact.CreateContactInXDb.AddFacets(Contact contact, CreateUserResult createUserResult)
   at Sitecore.Commerce.Pipelines.Customers.CreateContact.CreateContactInXDb.Process(ServicePipelineArgs args)
   at (Object , Object[] )
   at Sitecore.Pipelines.CorePipeline.Run(PipelineArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Pipelines.DefaultCorePipelineManager.Run(String pipelineName, PipelineArgs args, String pipelineDomain)
   at Sitecore.Commerce.Pipelines.PipelineService.RunPipeline[TArgs](String pipelineName, TArgs args)
   at Sitecore.Commerce.Services.ServiceProvider.RunPipeline[TRequest,TResult](String pipelineName, TRequest request)

Initially, I checked the Contacts collection in the MongoDb, but the user with the reported email was not there. At that point, I started to suspect that the issue was actually something related to how the user sessions are handled by Sitecore.

I tried to look for more information in the Sitecore Knowledge Base site, and I found this article https://kb.sitecore.net/articles/373937. Inside there is a patch file (it works now, when I tried to get the file, it was not working and I contacted Sitecore Support, and they updated the file).

This patch replaces the original CreateContactInXDb method that actually checks if the contact exists first. With the patch applied in the production site, the problem was solved.

That’s it for today.

Until the next post!