Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm · error

Invalid video id!

Error message

Invalid video id!

What it means

Thrown by the YoutubeLoader constructor when the `videoId` argument is falsy (null, undefined, empty string, or 0). This is an in-house port of LangChain's YouTube loader; the constructor is the single gate that guarantees a downstream fetch URL can be built. It fires before any network call, so it is purely an input-contract violation, not a transient failure.

Source

Thrown at collector/utils/extensions/YoutubeTranscript/YoutubeLoader/index.js:16

const { validYoutubeVideoUrl } = require("../../../url");

/*
 * This is just a custom implementation of the Langchain JS YouTubeLoader class
 * as the dependency for YoutubeTranscript is quite fickle and its a rat race to keep it up
 * and instead of waiting for patches we can just bring this simple script in-house and at least
 * be able to patch it since its so flaky. When we have more connectors we can kill this because
 * it will be a pain to maintain over time.
 */
class YoutubeLoader {
  #videoId;
  #language;
  #addVideoInfo;

  constructor({ videoId = null, language = null, addVideoInfo = false } = {}) {
    if (!videoId) throw new Error("Invalid video id!");
    this.#videoId = videoId;
    this.#language = language;
    this.#addVideoInfo = addVideoInfo;
  }

  /**
   * Extracts the videoId from a YouTube video URL.
   * @param url The URL of the YouTube video.
   * @returns The videoId of the YouTube video.
   */
  static getVideoID(url) {
    const videoId = validYoutubeVideoUrl(url, true);
    if (videoId) return videoId;
    throw new Error("Failed to get youtube video id from the url");
  }

  /**
   * Creates a new instance of the YoutubeLoader class from a YouTube video

View on GitHub (pinned to 526360e320)

Solutions

1. Validate that `videoId` is a non-empty 11-character string before constructing YoutubeLoader.
2. Prefer the `YoutubeLoader.createFromUrl(url, config)` static factory, which extracts and validates the id in one step.
3. If constructing directly, source the id only from `YoutubeLoader.getVideoID(url)` / `YoutubeTranscript.retrieveVideoId(input)` so it can never be falsy.
4. Wrap construction in try/catch and surface a user-facing 'invalid YouTube link' message instead of crashing the ingestion pipeline.

Example fix

// before
const loader = new YoutubeLoader({ videoId: maybeMissing });

// after
if (!videoId || videoId.length !== 11) throw new Error('A valid 11-char YouTube video id is required');
const loader = new YoutubeLoader({ videoId });

function assertVideoId(videoId) {
  if (typeof videoId !== 'string' || !/^[A-Za-z0-9_-]{11}$/.test(videoId)) {
    throw new Error('A valid 11-character YouTube video id is required');
  }
  return videoId;
}
// run before constructing YoutubeLoader
const loader = new YoutubeLoader({ videoId: assertVideoId(maybeId) });

function isValidVideoId(v) {
  return typeof v === 'string' && /^[A-Za-z0-9_-]{11}$/.test(v);
}

try {
  const loader = new YoutubeLoader({ videoId });
} catch (e) {
  if (/Invalid video id/i.test(e.message)) {
    return { error: 'Please provide a valid YouTube video link.' };
  }
  throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling `new YoutubeLoader({})`, `new YoutubeLoader({ videoId: null })`, or `new YoutubeLoader({ videoId: '' })` directly. Also reached indirectly when `YoutubeLoader.createFromUrl(url)` succeeds in parsing but a caller passes the result's videoId as undefined, or when a code path constructs the loader from an unvalidated user-supplied field that happens to be empty.

Common situations: A connector or data-source ingestion job receives a YouTube record whose URL/id field is missing or was stripped by an upstream sanitizer; a refactor renames the `videoId` field but forgets one call site; tests that instantiate the loader without a fixture id.

Related errors

• Impossible to retrieve Youtube video ID.
• Failed to get youtube video id from the url
• Filename is required!
• Invalid scope: ${JSON.stringify(v)}
• Content must be a non-empty string

AI-assisted analysis of Mintplex-Labs/anything-llm@526360e320 (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/cd4f1f0470caf0e0. Report an issue: GitHub.