OpenBB-finance/OpenBB · error · OpenBBError

Invalid URL '{url}'. Only PDF documents are supported.

Error message

Invalid URL '{url}'. Only PDF documents are supported.

What it means

Companion guard in the same URL loop: each URL must end with .pdf (case-insensitive). The extractor only parses PDF documents, so any HTML page, direct-content URL, or file without a .pdf extension is rejected up front with an OpenBBError-wrapped ValueError.

Source

Thrown at openbb_platform/providers/government_us/openbb_government_us/models/weather_bulletin_download.py:71

        **kwargs: Any,
    ) -> dict:
        """Extract the raw PDF content."""
        # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
        from openbb_core.provider.utils.helpers import get_async_requests_session

        results: dict = {}
        urls = query.urls

        # Verify that all URLs are going to be valid USDA URLs
        for url in urls:
            if not url.lower().startswith("https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/"):
                raise OpenBBError(
                    ValueError(
                        f"Invalid URL '{url}'. Only URLs from 'esmis.nal.usda.gov' are supported."
                    )
                )
            if not url.lower().endswith(".pdf"):
                raise OpenBBError(
                    ValueError(
                        f"Invalid URL '{url}'. Only PDF documents are supported."
                    )
                )

        try:
            async with await get_async_requests_session() as session:
                session._max_field_size = 32768  # pylint: disable=protected-access

                for url in urls:
                    async with await session.get(url) as response:
                        if response.status != 200:
                            raise OpenBBError(
                                ValueError(
                                    f"Failed to download document from {url}. Status code: {response.status}"
                                )
                            )
                        content_bytes = await response.read()

View on GitHub (pinned to 3e071fcc2c)

Solutions

1. Pass the direct PDF download links from esmis.nal.usda.gov (they end in .pdf).
2. Get URLs programmatically from the weather_bulletin endpoint response, which returns the PDF links.
3. If the site changed its URL scheme, update openbb-platform.

Example fix

# before
urls=["https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/catalog/record/12345"]

# after
urls=["https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/catalog/download/12345/PDF/wwcb-2024.pdf"]

def is_pdf_url(url: str) -> bool:
    return url.lower().endswith(".pdf")

def is_pdf_download_url(u: str) -> bool is not None and isinstance(u, str) and u.lower().startswith("https://esmis.nal.usda.gov/") and u.lower().endswith(".pdf")

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a landing/abstract page URL (no .pdf), a .htm/.html link, or a download URL with query strings after the extension trimmed.

Common situations: Copying the catalog page URL instead of the 'Download' link; ESMIS links that route through a redirect without .pdf in the path.

Related errors

• Either 'content' or 'url' must be provided.
• Invalid URL reference provided
• Year must not be before 1974.
• Invalid year. Year cannot be in the future.
• Invalid URL '{url}'. Only URLs from 'esmis.nal.usda.gov' are

AI-assisted analysis of OpenBB-finance/OpenBB@3e071fcc2c (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/69f752975feac59e. Report an issue: GitHub.