RocketChat/Rocket.Chat · error · Meteor.Error

error-invalid-user

error-invalid-user

Error message

Invalid user

What it means

The exported getUserMentionsByChannel(userId, roomId, options) helper throws error-invalid-user when Users.findOneById(userId) returns null — the passed userId matches no user document. Reached through the Meteor method wrapper, userId is always the logged-in user's id, so in practice this means the session belongs to a user record that no longer exists (deleted or merged mid-session).

Source

Thrown at apps/meteor/server/meteor-methods/messages/getUserMentionsByChannel.ts:26

import { methodDeprecationLogger } from '../../lib/deprecationWarningLogger';

declare module '@rocket.chat/ddp-client' {
	// eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/naming-convention
	interface ServerMethods {
		getUserMentionsByChannel(params: { roomId: string; options: { limit: number; skip: number; sort: { ts: -1 | 1 } } }): IMessage[];
	}
}

export const getUserMentionsByChannel = async (
	userId: string,
	roomId: string,
	options: { limit?: number; skip?: number; sort?: { ts?: -1 | 1 } },
) => {
	check(roomId, String);

	const user = await Users.findOneById(userId);
	if (!user) {
		throw new Meteor.Error('error-invalid-user', 'Invalid user');
	}

	const room = await Rooms.findOneById(roomId);

	if (!room || !(await canAccessRoomAsync(room, user))) {
		throw new Meteor.Error('error-invalid-room', 'Invalid room', {
			method: 'getUserMentionsByChannel',
		});
	}

	return Messages.findVisibleByMentionAndRoomId(user.username, roomId, options).toArray();
};

Meteor.methods<ServerMethods>({
	async getUserMentionsByChannel({ roomId, options }) {
		methodDeprecationLogger.method('getUserMentionsByChannel', '9.0.0', '/v1/channels.getAllUserMentionsByChannel');
		const uid = Meteor.userId();

View on GitHub (pinned to b2c16d5842)

Solutions

1. Verify the user id exists (or trust the session and treat the error as 'stale session')
2. Force re-login by clearing the resume token so the stale session is discarded
3. Tear down client state for deleted users instead of retrying

Example fix

// before
const mentions = await getUserMentionsByChannel(userId, roomId, options);

// after
const user = await Users.findOneById(userId);
if (!user) {
  throw new Error('stale session — re-login required');
}
const mentions = await getUserMentionsByChannel(userId, roomId, options);

const currentUserId = Meteor.userId();
const userStillExists = currentUserId && UsersCollection.findOne({ _id: currentUserId });
if (!userStillExists) {
  // stale session for a deleted user — force logout instead of calling
}

try {
  const mentions = await Meteor.callAsync('getUserMentionsByChannel', { roomId, options });
} catch (error) {
  if (error instanceof Meteor.Error && error.error === 'error-invalid-user') {
    // user record gone — logout and clear local state
  } else {
    throw error;
  }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the exported helper directly with a stale or deleted userId; the user document being deleted while their session is still live (admin deletion, purge); a race where Meteor.userId() resolved but the user record was removed before the lookup.

Common situations: An admin deletes a user whose browser tab is still open; imports/merges that rewrite user ids; test code invoking the helper with hardcoded ids from a previous database state.

Understand the failure class

Background: "User not found", "Invalid user", and "does not exist": what missing-user lookup errors mean across Rocket.Chat, LiteLLM, Phabricator, rustfs, and pnpm — this error's family across 10 libraries.

Related errors

• error-invalid-user
• error-invalid-user
• error-invalid-room
• error-invalid-user
• error-invalid-user

AI-assisted analysis of RocketChat/Rocket.Chat@b2c16d5842 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/6788f0de4fe3e81e. Report an issue: GitHub.