apache/beam · error

error occurred while performing search for query

Error message

error occurred while performing search for query: [%v]

What it means

searchResourcesFn.ProcessElement executes a FHIR search query via fn.searchResources (which internally pages through SearchQuery results). Any error from the search — transport failure, non-OK API response, or pagination failure — is wrapped with this message including the SearchQuery, emitted to the dead-letter channel, and counted as an error instead of emitting found resources.

Solutions

1. Validate the SearchQuery parameters against the FHIR store's supported search parameters (CapabilityStatement)
2. Check the wrapped cause in the dead-letter string for the HTTP status code
3. Test the equivalent REST call: GET <fhirStore>/fhir/<type>?<params> with the same credentials
4. Retry with backoff for transient failures; split large searches into smaller pages/date ranges
5. Verify store path and identity; ensure the resource type exists in the store

Example fix

// before
emitDeadLetter(errors.Wrapf(err, "error occurred while performing search for query: [%v]", query).Error())
// after
if isTransient(err) && attempt < maxAttempts { return retrySearch(query, attempt+1) }
emitDeadLetter(errors.Wrapf(err, "error occurred while performing search for query: [%v]", query).Error())

// check the search parameter is supported by the store
params := []string{query.Parameter}
supported := fetchSupportedSearchParameters(fhirStoreURL) // from CapabilityStatement
for _, p := range params {
    if !contains(supported, p) { return fmt.Errorf("unsupported search param %q", p) }
}

// wrap searchResources with bounded retries
result, err := retry(3, backoff, func() ([]string, error) {
    return fn.searchResources(ctx, query)
})
if err != nil { emitDeadLetter(...); return }

When it happens

Trigger: executeAndRecordLatency(...searchResources...) returns an error for the given SearchQuery: bad query parameters rejected by the server, network failure, invalid identifier/store path, or errors while fetching subsequent pages of results.

Common situations: Invalid FHIR search parameter names in the query (server returns 400); searching a nonexistent resource type; token/auth failures; queries without pagination limits hitting server-side timeouts; Dataflow workers without API access.

Understand the failure class

Background: "API request failed": what wrapped HTTP errors from external APIs mean and how to find the real cause — this error's family across 29 libraries.

Related errors

• execute bundles entry contains bad status
• could not extract body from execute bundles response
• could not extract body from read resource
• could not parse body from execute bundle response
• could not resolve to a temp directory for import batch files

AI-assisted analysis of apache/beam@12126d8942 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b0d448bdcfe7ca6c. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at sdks/go/pkg/beam/io/fhirio/search.go:76

	// Path to FHIR store where search will be performed.
	FhirStorePath string
}

func (fn searchResourcesFn) String() string {
	return "searchResourcesFn"
}

func (fn *searchResourcesFn) Setup() {
	fn.fnCommonVariables.setup(fn.String())
}

func (fn *searchResourcesFn) ProcessElement(ctx context.Context, query SearchQuery, emitFoundResources func(string, []string), emitDeadLetter func(string)) {
	resourcesFound, err := executeAndRecordLatency(ctx, &fn.latencyMs, func() ([]string, error) {
		return fn.searchResources(ctx, query)
	})
	if err != nil {
		fn.resourcesErrorCount.Inc(ctx, 1)
		emitDeadLetter(errors.Wrapf(err, "error occurred while performing search for query: [%v]", query).Error())
		return
	}

	fn.resourcesSuccessCount.Inc(ctx, 1)
	emitFoundResources(query.Identifier, resourcesFound)
}

func (fn *searchResourcesFn) searchResources(ctx context.Context, query SearchQuery) ([]string, error) {
	resourcesInPage, nextPageToken, err := fn.searchResourcesPaginated(ctx, query, "")
	allResources := resourcesInPage
	for nextPageToken != "" {
		resourcesInPage, nextPageToken, err = fn.searchResourcesPaginated(ctx, query, nextPageToken)
		allResources = append(allResources, resourcesInPage...)
	}
	return allResources, err
}

// Performs a search request retrieving results only from the page identified by

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