PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function setEscapeMessageFlag() on boolean

Question

I encountered this error unexpectedly. How can I find the solution to solve it? This is where error occured

$resultPage->getLayout()->getBlock('messages')->setEscapeMessageFlag(true); 

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PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function setEscapeMessageFlag() on boolean in /var/www/html/magento2/vendor/magento/module-customer/Controller/Account/Edit.php:83\n Stack trace:\n

#0 /var/www/html/magento2/var/generation/Magento/Customer/Controller/Account/Edit/Interceptor.php(24): Magento\Customer\Controller\Account\Edit->execute()\n

#1 /var/www/html/magento2/vendor/magento/framework/App/Action/Action.php(102): Magento\Customer\Controller\Account\Edit\Interceptor->execute()\n

#2 /var/www/html/magento2/vendor/magento/framework/Interception/Interceptor.php(74): Magento\Framework\App\Action\Action->dispatch(Object(Magento\Framework\App\Request\Http))\n

#3 /var/www/html/magento2/vendor/magento/framework/Interception/Chain/Chain.php(70): Magento\Customer\Controller\Account\Edit\Interceptor->___callParent('dispatch', Array)\n

#4 /var/www/html/magento2/vendor/magento/framework/Interception/Chain/Chain.php(63): Magento\Framework\Interception\Chain\Chain->invokeNext('Magento\\Custome...', 'dispatch', Object(Magento\Customer\Con in /var/www/html/magento2/vendor/magento/module-customer/Controller/Account/Edit.php on line 83

Answer 1

This is a known Magento bug:

https://github.com/magento/magento2/issues/4127

Basically if the page lacks page.messages block, it will cause Magento 2 fail with critical error message (dev mode) or white screen of death (production mode). Usually it happens when your layout contains something like this:

<referenceBlock name="page.messages" remove="true"/>

Removing message block is not a good practice anyway, so if you absolutely need to do it, just display empty template file instead.