FAQ

Does Yarn add any database tables?

No. It reads Craft’s own tables and assembles the graph in memory, cached in whatever cache Craft is configured to use. Uninstalling leaves nothing behind.

Is it safe to delete everything on the “unused assets” list?

No — not without checking. Yarn can only see what it scans. An asset referenced from a template, from a CSS background, from a plugin that stores references in its own table, or from a source you have switched off is invisible to it and appears on that list.

Before a bulk delete: switch on the urls source, check whether the assets are referenced from your templates, and take a backup.

Why is an image I know is in a Matrix block shown as used by the page?

That is the rollUpNested setting, on by default. A relation held inside a Matrix block is attributed to the page that owns it — which is the thing you would open, and the thing that breaks. Switch it off to see the blocks themselves.

Why does the map only show some of my site?

Two reasons, and it says which. Hide unconnected is on by default, so elements with no relations are left out. And past the Map node limit the map keeps the busiest elements and says it has trimmed.

Filter by source, or double-click an element to see just its neighbourhood.

Can Yarn stop me deleting something that is in use?

No, and nothing can. Craft has no cancellable hook that fires before a field has already deleted the element’s nested content — Elements::EVENT_BEFORE_DELETE_ELEMENT is not cancellable, and vetoing the one that is keeps the element row while destroying its blocks.

What Yarn does instead is tell you before: the Relations panel in the sidebar of every element edit screen says how many elements point at this one. And with deleteGuard set to log, it writes down what was still using an element at the moment it went.

Does it count relations from drafts and revisions?

No, deliberately. A revision’s relations are a snapshot of what an entry used to point at. Counting them means every asset ever swapped out still reads as “in use” — the single most misleading thing a relations report can say, because it is the one that stops you cleaning up.

Why is my user list full of orphans?

It would be, which is why users and tags are not in orphanKinds by default. A user nothing relates to is a normal user.

What are all these “Address” elements?

Craft’s addresses are elements, so they are in the graph. On a Commerce site there can be tens of thousands, and none of them relate to anything. Exclude them under Settings → Excluded sources, where they appear as Element type: Address.

How current is the graph?

It is discarded whenever any element is saved, deleted or restored, and otherwise reused for cacheDuration seconds (300 by default). Rebuild in the toolbar forces a fresh one.

Yarn is slow on my site.

Turn off the urls source if it is on — it is the only one that reads every field value on the site. Exclude the sections and element types you do not care about. Raise cacheDuration.

If the graph is very large it will not be cached at all; storage/logs/yarn.log says so when that happens. See troubleshooting.md.

Can I see relations across sites?

The graph is built per site — that is the only way “does this render here” has an answer. An element that a relation reaches but which does not exist in the site being mapped is included and marked absent, and the absentTargets check reports it.

Does it work with Commerce, Formie, CKEditor, Hyper…?

Anything that stores its relations in Craft’s relations table works with no help at all, which covers most plugins. Entries embedded in CKEditor are nested elements and are rolled up like any other. Links stored as reference tags are picked up by the refTags source.

A plugin that keeps references in its own table is invisible until somebody writes a source for it — which is what RegisterEdgeSourcesEvent is for. See extending.md.