GoogleCloudPlatform/microservices-demo · error

failed to create request

Error message

failed to create request

What it means

http.NewRequest failed while building the POST request to the shopping assistant service. Only fires with a malformed URL (e.g. empty or invalid shoppingAssistantSvcAddr composed into "http://..."), not with network problems, which surface later at Do().

Source

Thrown at src/frontend/handlers.go:467

}

func (fe *frontendServer) chatBotHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
	log := r.Context().Value(ctxKeyLog{}).(logrus.FieldLogger)
	type Response struct {
		Message string `json:"message"`
	}

	type LLMResponse struct {
		Content string         `json:"content"`
		Details map[string]any `json:"details"`
	}

	var response LLMResponse

	url := "http://" + fe.shoppingAssistantSvcAddr
	req, err := http.NewRequest(http.MethodPost, url, r.Body)
	if err != nil {
		renderHTTPError(log, r, w, errors.Wrap(err, "failed to create request"), http.StatusInternalServerError)
		return
	}
	req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
	req.Header.Set("Accept", "application/json")
	res, err := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
	if err != nil {
		renderHTTPError(log, r, w, errors.Wrap(err, "failed to send request"), http.StatusInternalServerError)
		return
	}

	body, err := io.ReadAll(res.Body)
	if err != nil {
		renderHTTPError(log, r, w, errors.Wrap(err, "failed to read response"), http.StatusInternalServerError)
		return
	}

	fmt.Printf("%+v\n", body)
	fmt.Printf("%+v\n", res)

View on GitHub (pinned to 72ba613a05)

Solutions

1. Validate fe.shoppingAssistantSvcAddr at startup; reject empty or malformed addresses.
2. Use url.Parse to validate the composed URL before http.NewRequest.
3. Fix the service address flag/env in the deployment configuration.

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at src/frontend/handlers.go:467 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of GoogleCloudPlatform/microservices-demo@72ba613a05 (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a35dab7fe4f5dcc6. Report an issue: GitHub.