Kong/insomnia · error · Error

Could not set body without existing body path

Error message

Could not set body without existing body path

What it means

Guard in the plugin response context's setBody: attempting to replace the response body when no bodyPath exists on the stored response (nothing was written to disk), so there is no file to overwrite — a should-never-happen internal consistency check.

Solutions

1. Ensure the response has been received and streamed to disk before mutating the body
2. Report as an internal bug if triggered during normal plugin usage

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/insomnia/src/plugins/context/response.ts:83 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of Kong/insomnia@d9bb2b0142 (2026-08-26). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0508cbdd01f57b7e. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at packages/insomnia/src/plugins/context/response.ts:83

          try {
            fs.statSync(response?.bodyPath);
          } catch (err) {
            console.warn('Failed to read response body', err.message);
            return readFailureValue === undefined ? null : readFailureValue;
          }
          if (response?.bodyCompression === 'zip') {
            return fs.createReadStream(response?.bodyPath).pipe(zlib.createGunzip());
          }
          return fs.createReadStream(response?.bodyPath);
        };

        return getResponseBodyStream(response);
      },

      setBody(body: Buffer) {
        // Should never happen but just in case it does...
        if (!response.bodyPath) {
          throw new Error('Could not set body without existing body path');
        }

        const fs = require('node:fs');
        fs.writeFileSync(response.bodyPath, body);
        response.bytesContent = body.length;
      },

      getHeader(name: string): string | string[] | null {
        const headers = response.headers || [];
        const matchedHeaders = headers.filter(h => h.name.toLowerCase() === name.toLowerCase());

        if (matchedHeaders.length > 1) {
          return matchedHeaders.map(h => h.value);
        } else if (matchedHeaders.length === 1) {
          return matchedHeaders[0].value;
        }
        return null;
      },

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