A TextField stored in a numeric column makes the whole contentlet unindexable

[dario-daza]

Problem Statement

ESMappingAPIImpl.loadFields() decides how to serialize a field by its storage column
(field_contentlet) rather than its field type. When a TextField is backed by an integerN
or floatN column — which dotCMS allows and which exists in real content types — the String value
is handed to DecimalFormat.format() and throws:

WARN  business.ESMappingAPIImpl - Error indexing field: viewWeekTotal of contentlet: 3c3276a0-33d2-4c5e-80a8-09edeb11572f
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Cannot format given Object as a Number
    at java.base/java.text.DecimalFormat.format(DecimalFormat.java:584)
    at java.base/java.text.Format.format(Format.java:165)
    at com.dotcms.content.elasticsearch.business.ESMappingAPIImpl.loadFields(ESMappingAPIImpl.java:1118)
    at com.dotcms.content.elasticsearch.business.ESMappingAPIImpl.toMap(ESMappingAPIImpl.java:465)
    at com.dotcms.content.elasticsearch.business.ContentletIndexAPIImpl.addBulkRequest(ContentletIndexAPIImpl.java:2785)

The affected fields:

Content Type	Field	field_type	field_contentlet
RptTopHits	viewWeekTotal	com.dotcms.contenttype.model.field.TextField	integer1
Trending	viewWeekTotal	com.dotcms.contenttype.model.field.TextField	integer1

Stored value: {"type": "Text", "value": "54"} — a String, correctly matching the declared
TextField. But the branch is chosen by the column name:

// ESMappingAPIImpl.java:1114
} else if (field.getFieldContentlet()
        .startsWith(ESMappingConstants.FIELD_ELASTIC_TYPE_FLOAT) || field
        .getFieldContentlet()
        .startsWith(ESMappingConstants.FIELD_ELASTIC_TYPE_INTEGER)) {
    contentletMap.put(keyName, valueObj);
    contentletMap.put(keyNameText, numFormatter.format(valueObj));   // String -> IllegalArgumentException
}

integer1 starts with integer, so the numeric branch is taken for a field whose type and value
are both textual.

The error handling contradicts itself

// ESMappingAPIImpl.java:1141
} catch (Exception e) {
    Logger.warn(ESMappingAPIImpl.class, "Error indexing field: " + field.getFieldName()
            + " of contentlet: " + contentlet.getInode(), e);
    throw new DotDataException(e.getMessage(), e);
}

It logs at WARN — the level that says "recoverable, carry on" — and then rethrows, aborting the
entire contentlet. One misconfigured field out of dozens makes the whole document unindexable. The
adjacent Date branch a few lines above does the opposite and degrades gracefully:

} catch(Exception ex) {
    contentletMap.put(keyName, valueObj);
    contentletMap.put(keyNameText, valueObj.toString());
}

A valueObj.toString() fallback here would have indexed "54" correctly, since that is what the
field declares itself to be.

How it surfaced

Found while reindexing 370 contentlets via POST /api/v1/content/_bulkrefresh: 364 succeeded, 6
failed — 4 from an unrelated serialization limit and these 2. Both are RptTopHits/Trending
content, so any reindex touching those types loses those documents. The failure is silent from the
operator's side: the UI reports a flat failure count with no field attribution (see the companion
issue on per-engine and per-document failure visibility).

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a content type with a Text field whose backing column is numeric. On an existing
   install this can be confirmed with:

   SELECT st.velocity_var_name AS content_type, f.velocity_var_name AS field,
          f.field_type, f.field_contentlet
   FROM field f JOIN structure st ON st.inode = f.structure_inode
   WHERE f.field_type LIKE '%TextField'
     AND (f.field_contentlet LIKE 'integer%' OR f.field_contentlet LIKE 'float%');

2. Save a contentlet with a textual value in that field (e.g. "54").

3. Reindex it — full reindex, POST /api/v1/esindex/reindex?contentType=<type>, or
   POST /api/v1/content/_bulkrefresh.

4. Observe Cannot format given Object as a Number and the contentlet absent from the index.

5. Note the value is a perfectly valid TextField value; nothing in the UI flags the field or
   the content type as invalid.

Acceptance Criteria

• loadFields() selects the serialization branch by field type, not by storage column;
  or the numeric branch tolerates non-numeric values.
• A field that cannot be serialized does not abort the whole contentlet — it is skipped (or
  indexed via toString()) and the rest of the document is indexed, consistent with how the
  Date branch already behaves.
• If a field is genuinely unindexable, the reported failure names the field, not just the
  contentlet, so the content-type misconfiguration is actionable.
• The log level matches the outcome: if the document is aborted it is an ERROR, not a WARN.
• Consider validating type/column consistency when a content type is saved, so this cannot be
  modelled in the first place.

dotCMS Version

dotcms/dotcms:trunk. PostgreSQL 16, ~1.55 M contentlets, OpenSearch 1.3.20 + 3.4.0 in
PHASE_1_DUAL_WRITE_ES_READS.

Severity

Medium - Some functionality impacted

Medium — affects only content types with this modelling, but for those every document is silently
missing from the index, and the cause is not discoverable from the UI.

Links

• ESMappingAPIImpl.java:1114 — branch selected by field_contentlet instead of field type
• ESMappingAPIImpl.java:1118 — numFormatter.format(valueObj)
• ESMappingAPIImpl.java:1141 — WARN followed by rethrow
• ESMappingAPIImpl.java:1121 — the Date branch that degrades gracefully instead

Freshdesk ticket: NA — found during internal ES→OpenSearch migration testing.

[github-actions]

PRs linked to this issue

• Spec: TextField in a numeric column makes the whole contentlet unindexable (#37272) by @fabrizzio-dotCMS