apache/cassandra · error · SyntaxException

Invalid value for property

Error message

Invalid value for property '%s'. It should be a map.

What it means

PropertyDefinitions.getMap() extracts a CQL property value (e.g. from CREATE/ALTER TABLE WITH options or credentials) that must be a map of string options. When the parsed property value exists but is neither a Map nor an empty Set (the sentinel for '{}'), the parser cannot interpret it as an option map and throws a SyntaxException. It signals that the syntax used for the property's value does not match the expected map literal form.

Solutions

1. Wrap the property value in map-literal braces: WITH replication = {'class': 'NetworkTopologyStrategy', 'dc1': 3}
2. Quote each key and string value inside the map with single quotes
3. Check which property is named in the error and verify its expected shape in the CQL docs
4. If building CQL from code, ensure map-typed properties are rendered as {'k':'v', ...}

Example fix

// before
CREATE KEYSPACE ks WITH replication = SimpleStrategy;
// after
CREATE KEYSPACE ks WITH replication = {'class': 'SimpleStrategy', 'replication_factor': 1};

if (!/\{\s*'[^']+'\s*:\s*'[^']+'/.test(propValue) && !/^\{\s*\}$/.test(propValue)) throw new Error(`Property ${name} must be a map literal: {'k':'v'}`);

function isMapLiteral(v) { return typeof v === 'string' ? v.trim().startsWith('{') && v.trim().endsWith('}') : v instanceof Map; }

When it happens

Trigger: Executing CQL like CREATE TABLE ... WITH options = 'string' or ALTER KEYSPACE WITH replication = 'SimpleStrategy' where the value after '=' parses to a scalar/list instead of a map literal, e.g. replication = SimpleStrategy or options = [1,2].

Common situations: Copy-pasted CQL missing the braces around map values (replication = SimpleStrategy instead of {'class': 'SimpleStrategy'}); quoting mistakes that make the parser treat the value as a string; hand-written migration scripts or tooling generating CQL programmatically.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

• (dynamic first syntax error message from parser/lexer)
• Failed parsing : [ ] reason
• Failed parsing statement
• FrozenType() only accepts one parameter
• Invalid boolean value

AI-assisted analysis of apache/cassandra@88fd0f6a0e (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/481f896c0adea674. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/java/org/apache/cassandra/cql3/statements/PropertyDefinitions.java:114

        if (val == null)
            return null;
        if (val instanceof Map && ((Map<?, ?>)val).isEmpty()) // to solve the ambiguity between empty map and empty set
            return Collections.emptySet();
        if (!(val instanceof Set))
            throw new SyntaxException(String.format("Invalid value for property '%s'. It should be a set of identifiers.", name));
        return (Set<QualifiedName>) val;
    }

    @Nullable
    protected Map<String, String> getMap(String name) throws SyntaxException
    {
        Object val = properties.get(name);
        if (val == null)
            return null;
        if (val instanceof Set && ((Set<?>)val).isEmpty()) // to solve the ambiguity between empty map and empty set
            return Collections.emptyMap();
        if (!(val instanceof Map))
            throw new SyntaxException(format("Invalid value for property '%s'. It should be a map.", name));
        return (Map<String, String>)val;
    }

    public boolean getBoolean(String key, boolean defaultValue) throws SyntaxException
    {
        String value = getString(key);
        return value != null ? parseBoolean(key, value) : defaultValue;
    }

    public static boolean parseBoolean(String key, String value) throws SyntaxException
    {
        if (null == value)
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("value argument can't be null");

        String lowerCasedValue = toLowerCaseLocalized(value);

        if (POSITIVE_PATTERN.matcher(lowerCasedValue).matches())
            return true;

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