What causes "No more than 7 columns per view." in phacility/phabricator?

Reduce the view to at most 7 columns: slice the data, group items, or paginate.

phacility/phabricator · error · Exception

No more than 7 columns per view.

Error message

No more than 7 columns per view.

What it means

AphrontMultiColumnView styles columns with per-count CSS classes ('...-N-up'), and fluid mode (setFluidLayout(true) or setFluidishLayout(true)) only has CSS definitions up to seven columns (see upstream T4054). render() therefore enforces the cap: a fluid multi-column view with more than 7 columns throws. Fixed-width layouts are not subject to this check.

Source

Thrown at src/view/layout/AphrontMultiColumnView.php:70

    return $this;
  }

  public function setBorder($border) {
    $this->border = $border;
    return $this;
  }

  public function render() {
    require_celerity_resource('aphront-multi-column-view-css');

    $classes = array();
    $classes[] = 'aphront-multi-column-inner';
    $classes[] = 'grouped';

    if ($this->fluidishLayout || $this->fluidLayout) {
      // we only support seven columns for now for fluid views; see T4054
      if (count($this->columns) > 7) {
        throw new Exception(pht('No more than 7 columns per view.'));
      }
    }

    $classes[] = 'aphront-multi-column-'.count($this->columns).'-up';

    $columns = array();
    $i = 0;
    foreach ($this->columns as $column_data) {
      $column_class = array('aphront-multi-column-column');
      if ($this->gutter) {
        $column_class[] = $this->gutter;
      }
      $outer_class = array('aphront-multi-column-column-outer');
      if (++$i === count($this->columns)) {
        $column_class[] = 'aphront-multi-column-column-last';
        $outer_class[] = 'aphront-multi-colum-column-outer-last';
      }
      $column = $column_data['column'];

View on GitHub (pinned to 5720a38cfe)

Solutions

Reduce the view to at most 7 columns: slice the data, group items, or paginate.
Or keep the layout fixed-width (remove the fluid/fluidish setters), which does not enforce the cap.
For larger counts, split the items into several stacked AphrontMultiColumnView rows or use a different layout primitive.

Example fix

// before
$view = id(new AphrontMultiColumnView())
  ->setFluidishLayout(true);
foreach ($items as $item) {
  $view->addColumn($item); // throws once an 8th column is added
}

// after: chunk into rows of at most 7 columns
$out = array();
foreach (array_chunk($items, 7) as $row_items) {
  $row = id(new AphrontMultiColumnView())->setFluidishLayout(true);
  foreach ($row_items as $item) {
    $row->addColumn($item);
  }
  $out[] = $row;
}

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

$rows = (count($columns) > 7)
  ? array_chunk($columns, 7)
  : array($columns);
foreach ($rows as $row_columns) {
  $view = id(new AphrontMultiColumnView())->setFluidishLayout(true);
  foreach ($row_columns as $column) {
    $view->addColumn($column);
  }
  $out[] = $view;
}

Prevention

Hard-cap columns at 7 whenever fluid or fluidish mode is enabled.
Turn N>7 items into multiple stacked multi-column rows instead of one wide view.
Remember the check only applies to fluid layouts; fixed layouts bypass it but may look wrong.

When it happens

Trigger: Calling setFluidLayout(true) or setFluidishLayout(true) and then adding 8 or more columns via addColumn() — commonly a loop that adds one column per item without a limit.

Common situations: Dashboard-style custom pages that grow a column per result; turning an existing fixed 8+ column view fluid; dynamically generated column counts from user data.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of phacility/phabricator@5720a38cfe (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/40392d94e8acf8ce. Report an issue: GitHub.