PHP Errors and Problems

Call to a member function get() on null

This is a known error that happens since Joomla 3.7 in DOCman 2.x. The Joomla 3.7.x release changed an internal API that broke backwards compatibility.

DOCman 3.x is updated already with a fix for this and is fully compatible with Joomla 3.7. We advise all our users to upgrade at their earliest convenience.

DOCman 2.1.6 also fixes this issue in case upgrading from DOCman 2.x to DOCman 3.x is not possible.

You can find our upgrade guides here: https://www.joomlatools.com/extensions/docman/documentation/upgrading

500 Internal Server Error

A 500 Internal Server Error can be caused by various issues, but one of the most common causes is a low PHP memory limit.

If you have system debug enabled, you might find something like this:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 86 bytes) in /home/site/public_html/libraries/joomlatools/library/database/row/abstract.php on line 357

The error indicates that your PHP memory limit is too small for DOCman’s operations.

To solve this, you will need to increase the PHP memory limit. We recommend that you set the memory limit to at least 128MB.

Pro tip: When faced with a 500 Internal Server Error, enable system debug and error reporting in your global configuration. This should give you a more meaningful error that will help you figure out the root cause of the issue.

Joomla smart search problems when indexing large documents

You may encounter problems with indexing of large documents in Joomla smart search if your server's MySQL MEMORY engine maximum size is too small for Joomla smart search indexing. There are two options to overcome these problems.

1. Ask your hosting company increase the max_heap_table_size value
2. If you are not using smart search for DOCman you can disable the Smart Search - DOCman plugin