FlowiseAI/Flowise · error · Error

Failed to process binary file: ${error.message}

Error message

Failed to process binary file: ${error.message}

What it means

Top-level catch in the S3File binary processor. Any exception thrown while instantiating a format-specific loader (PDFLoader, DocxLoader, LoadOfSheet, PowerpointLoader, CSVLoader), calling its load(), or building the metadata map is rethrown wrapped in this message. Like error 180 it preserves only `error.message`, losing the stack trace and class.

Source

Thrown at packages/components/nodes/documentloaders/S3File/S3File.ts:985

                    lastModified: fileInfo.lastModified,
                    etag: fileInfo.etag,
                    bucketName: fileInfo.bucketName,
                    totalPages: docs.length // Total number of pages/sheets in the file
                }

                return docs.map((doc, index) => ({
                    ...doc,
                    metadata: {
                        ...doc.metadata, // Keep original loader metadata (page numbers, etc.)
                        ...s3Metadata, // Add S3 metadata
                        pageIndex: index // Add page/sheet index
                    }
                }))
            }

            return []
        } catch (error) {
            throw new Error(`Failed to process binary file: ${error.message}`)
        } finally {
            // Clean up temporary file
            if (tempFilePath && fsDefault.existsSync(tempFilePath)) {
                try {
                    fsDefault.unlinkSync(tempFilePath)
                } catch (e) {
                    console.warn(`Failed to delete temporary file: ${tempFilePath}`)
                }
            }
        }
    }

    private async createTempFile(buffer: Buffer, fileName: string, mimeType: string): Promise<string> {
        // Get appropriate file extension
        let extension = path.extname(fileName)
        if (!extension) {
            const extensionMap: { [key: string]: string } = {
                'application/pdf': '.pdf',

View on GitHub (pinned to abe4a8601a)

Solutions

1. Inspect `error.message` (it is propagated) and match it to the underlying loader's known failure modes.
2. Download the S3 object locally and open it in the native app to confirm it is valid and unencrypted.
3. Free disk space and verify the temp directory is writable.
4. Update or pin the parsing library version known to handle the file.
5. Add a pre-check (e.g. pdf-parse isEncrypted) before invoking the loader.

Example fix

// before
} catch (error) {
    throw new Error(`Failed to process binary file: ${error.message}`)
}

// after
} catch (error: any) {
    throw new Error(`Failed to process binary file (${fileInfo.mimeType}): ${error?.message ?? error}`)
}

import fs from 'fs'
if (!fs.existsSync(tempFilePath)) {
    throw new Error('Temp file missing before binary processing')
}
// crude magic-number check for PDF
const head = Buffer.alloc(4); const fd = fs.openSync(tempFilePath, 'r'); fs.readSync(fd, head, 0, 4, 0); fs.closeSync(fd)
if (fileInfo.mimeType === 'application/pdf' && head.toString() !== '%PDF') {
    throw new Error('File claims to be PDF but is not')
}

function isIDocumentArray(v: unknown): v is { pageContent: string; metadata: Record<string, unknown> }[] {
    return Array.isArray(v) && v.every(d => d && typeof (d as any).pageContent === 'string')
}

try {
    return await processBinaryFile(...)
} catch (e: any) {
    // propagate but keep the inner message + cause
    throw new Error(`Binary processing failed: ${e.message}`, { cause: e })
}

When it happens

Trigger: A loader throws because the temp file is corrupt (e.g. truncated PDF), the spreadsheet has a locked structure, pdf-parse fails on an encrypted PDF, the CSV has invalid encoding, or fsDefault.existsSync/unlinkSync in finally throws before the catch completes.

Common situations: Corrupted uploads, password-protected Office/PDF docs, EML/HTML disguised with an Office MIME, disk-full during temp file write, or a version mismatch in the parsing library (pdf-parse, exceljs).

Related errors

• Failed to load file ${filePath} using unstructured loader.
• Unsupported binary file type: ${mimeType}
• Could not find JSON block in the output.
• Failed to parse a valid scenario from the LLM's response. Pl
• Invalid JSON in the Chat NVIDIA NIM's baseOptions: ${excepti

AI-assisted analysis of FlowiseAI/Flowise@abe4a8601a (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bcf0a9b3ccfddd60. Report an issue: GitHub.