BerriAI/litellm · error · ValueError

vertex_location is required

Error message

vertex_location is required

What it means

validate_vertex_location guard: the client-supplied vertex_location is None/empty after resolution. Because it is interpolated into the request host (SSRF-sensitive), an explicit error is raised instead of defaulting silently.

Source

Thrown at litellm/llms/vertex_ai/common_utils.py:329

def validate_vertex_location(vertex_location: str | None) -> str:
    """
    Validate a Vertex AI location before interpolating it into a request host or
    URL path.

    ``vertex_location`` is client-controllable on the proxy (it flows in from the
    request body), so it must never be trusted verbatim in a URL or an attacker
    could point the host at their own server and exfiltrate the admin's Google
    access token. Allow the special ``global`` control plane and otherwise require
    a lowercase alphanumeric-plus-hyphen token (e.g. ``us``, ``us-central1``,
    ``eu``), which rejects host injection like ``attacker.example/`` or
    ``evil.com#``.
    """
    if vertex_location == "global":
        return vertex_location
    if vertex_location is None:
        raise ValueError("vertex_location is required")
    if not re.match(r"^[a-z][a-z0-9-]*$", vertex_location):
        raise ValueError("Invalid vertex_location format")
    return vertex_location


def get_vertex_base_url(
    vertex_location: str | None,
) -> str:
    """
    Get the base URL for Vertex AI API calls.

    - ``global`` uses the global control plane host.
    - Multi-region geographies (e.g. ``us``, ``eu``) use ``aiplatform.{geo}.rep.googleapis.com``.
    - Regional locations (e.g. ``us-central1``) use ``{region}-aiplatform.googleapis.com``.
    """
    validated_location: Final = validate_vertex_location(vertex_location)
    if validated_location == "global":
        return "https://aiplatform.googleapis.com"

View on GitHub (pinned to 77b7c6c40c)

Solutions

1. Set VERTEXAI_LOCATION environment variable.
2. Or pass vertex_location in litellm_params.

Example fix

os.environ["VERTEXAI_LOCATION"] = "us-central1"

When it happens

Trigger: Triggered when a Vertex AI call requires vertex_location but none is provided.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of BerriAI/litellm@77b7c6c40c (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e4fd0878013dfc8d. Report an issue: GitHub.