What causes "No messages found" in RocketChat/Rocket.Chat?

Handle 200 with messages: [] (or total: 0) as the no-messages case, not an error

RocketChat/Rocket.Chat · warning · Meteor.Error

error-no-messages

error-no-messages

Error message

No messages found

What it means

Intended to signal that im.messages.others found no messages (im.ts:821), but the check is if (!msgs) on the result of cursor.toArray() from findPaginated. toArray() always resolves to an array and empty arrays are truthy, so on a stock server this error is unreachable: a DM with zero messages returns 200 with messages: [] and total: 0. It is effectively dead code kept from an older implementation.

Solutions

Handle 200 with messages: [] (or total: 0) as the no-messages case, not an error
If you genuinely receive this error, suspect a customized/forked build - report it against the upstream repo

Example fix

// before (wrong assumption)
 const res = await api.get('/api/v1/im.messages.others', { params: { roomId } });
 if (res.error) handleEmpty(); // never happens for empty rooms

 // after
 const { messages, total } = await api.get('/api/v1/im.messages.others', { params: { roomId } });
 if (!messages?.length) handleEmpty(); // correct empty handling

Defensive patterns

Strategy: fallback

Validate before calling

const { messages, total } = await api.get('/api/v1/im.messages.others', { params: { roomId } });
const isEmpty = !Array.isArray(messages) || messages.length === 0 || total === 0;
if (isEmpty) renderEmptyState();

Prevention

Base empty-collection handling on the response payload (messages.length / total), never on an error
Read the endpoint's declared 200 schema rather than inferring behavior from throw sites

When it happens

Trigger: Only a driver-level failure that resolves toArray() to a falsy value could trigger it; a normal empty room or an out-of-range offset never does.

Common situations: Developers reading the throw site and writing dedicated handlers for error-no-messages; tests asserting a 400 on empty rooms that then see 200 + [] instead.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of RocketChat/Rocket.Chat@e4b8178b20 (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/73f319c8a318c4dc. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at apps/meteor/server/api/v1/im.ts:827

		if (!room || room?.t !== 'd') {
			throw new Meteor.Error('error-room-not-found', `No direct message room found by the id of: ${roomId}`);
		}

		const { offset, count } = await getPaginationItems(this.queryParams);
		const { sort, fields, query } = await this.parseJsonQuery();
		const ourQuery = Object.assign({}, query, { rid: room._id });

		const { cursor, totalCount } = Messages.findPaginated<IMessage>(ourQuery, {
			sort: sort || { ts: -1 },
			skip: offset,
			limit: count,
			projection: fields,
		});

		const [msgs, total] = await Promise.all([cursor.toArray(), totalCount]);

		if (!msgs) {
			throw new Meteor.Error('error-no-messages', 'No messages found');
		}

		return API.v1.success({
			messages: await normalizeMessagesForUser(msgs, this.userId),
			offset,
			count: msgs.length,
			total,
		});
	};

const dmListEndpointsProps = {
	authRequired: true as const,
	response: {
		200: paginatedImsResponseSchema,
		400: validateBadRequestErrorResponse,
		401: validateUnauthorizedErrorResponse,
	},
};

View on GitHub (pinned to e4b8178b20)