Allowing Duplicate Aliases Only Across Different Parents

The donor patch addressed a real catalog need: allow the same alias to appear under different parents, but still prevent two siblings from producing the exact same final URL.

Automatic Alias Guard

if ($modx->db->getValue("SELECT COUNT(id) FROM " . $tbl_site_content . " WHERE id<>'$id' AND parent=$parent AND alias='$alias'") != 0) {
    $cnt = 1;
    $tempAlias = $alias;
    while ($modx->db->getValue("SELECT COUNT(id) FROM " . $tbl_site_content . " WHERE id<>'$id' AND parent=$parent AND alias='$tempAlias'") != 0) {
        $tempAlias = $alias . $cnt;
        $cnt++;
    }
    $alias = $tempAlias;
}

Manual Alias Guard

The second half of the donor solution validated manually entered aliases under the same parent and stopped the save with a manager alert when a sibling conflict existed.

Why This Matters

• Catalog branches often need repeating product aliases under different sections.
• Sibling collisions still create duplicate URLs and broken routing.
• The right scope for alias uniqueness is often parent + alias, not the entire tree.

If you rely on duplicate aliases, test both automatic and manually entered alias flows. Fixing only one path leaves editors with inconsistent behavior.