OpenBB-finance/OpenBB · error · OpenBBError

Server error fetching report

Error message

Server error fetching report {report_id} -> {csv_text}

What it means

After a successful fetch of the report CSV, the code checks whether the literal substring 'error' appears anywhere in the lowercased body. USDA's handler returns an HTML/CSV error page instead of data when the report handler fails (bad template combo, server fault), and this check converts that into an explicit OpenBBError including the server text.

Solutions

1. Retry later if the USDA service is having issues.
2. Confirm the report id and format are genuinely supported via list_reports().
3. If you hit a false positive (legitimate data containing 'error'), report it upstream as an over-broad check.

try:
    parsed = await get_psd_report_data(report_id)
except OpenBBError as e:
    if "Server error fetching report" in str(e):
        await asyncio.sleep(60)  # USDA handler hiccup; retry later
        parsed = await get_psd_report_data(report_id)
    else:
        raise

When it happens

Trigger: Requesting a report whose templateId/format combination is broken server-side; USDA server errors; requesting a report during a data refresh window.

Common situations: Report ids valid in metadata but removed on the live handler; transient USDA outages. Note the check is coarse: any CSV cell containing the word 'error' (e.g. a footnote) would also trip it.

Related errors

• Expected ISO-8859-1 encoding but got
• Agency ID not found for dataflow
• Attribute ' ' is not available for . Valid attributes
• Country ' ' is not available for . Valid countries
• Error fetching report

AI-assisted analysis of OpenBB-finance/OpenBB@3e071fcc2c (2026-08-14). Data as JSON: /api/errors/58a392c680d35210. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at openbb_platform/providers/government_us/openbb_government_us/utils/psd_data_downloader.py:141

    # Build URLs for both formats
    html_url = get_report_url(report_id, "html")
    csv_url = get_report_url(report_id, "csv")
    session = await get_async_requests_session()

    try:
        # Fetch both HTML (for units) and CSV (for data)
        html_resp = await session.get(html_url)
        html = await html_resp.text()
        csv_resp = await session.get(csv_url)
        csv_text = await csv_resp.text()
    except ClientError as e:
        raise OpenBBError(f"Error fetching report {report_id} -> {e}") from e
    finally:
        await session.close()

    # Check for server error
    if "error" in csv_text.lower():
        raise OpenBBError(f"Server error fetching report {report_id} -> {csv_text}")

    lines = csv_text.replace("\r", "").strip().split("\n")

    return parse_report(template_id, lines, html)


def _get_commodity_attributes(commodity_code: str) -> list[str]:
    """Fetch valid attribute names for a commodity using the metadata API."""
    # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
    from openbb_core.provider.utils.helpers import make_request

    try:
        resp = make_request(
            f"https://apps.fas.usda.gov/PSDOnlineApi/api/query/GetMultiCommodityAttributes?commodityCodes={commodity_code},"
        )
        if resp.status_code == 200:
            data = resp.json()
            id_to_key = {v: k for k, v in ATTRIBUTES.items()}

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