apache/cassandra · error · InvalidRequestException

non-empty table is required

Error message

non-empty table is required

What it means

SchemaProvider.validateTable rejects an empty table name with InvalidRequestException('non-empty table is required') before any keyspace lookup. The API requires a concrete, non-empty table identifier to resolve metadata.

Solutions

1. Pass a valid, non-empty table name to the statement or API call.
2. Fix upstream statement parsing/templating so the table name is populated.
3. Add a client-side check that the table name is non-empty before issuing the operation.

Example fix

// before
TableMetadata tm = schema.validateTable(keyspace, tableName); // tableName == ""
// after
if (tableName == null || tableName.isEmpty()) throw new IllegalArgumentException("table name required");
TableMetadata tm = schema.validateTable(keyspace, tableName);

if (tableName == null || tableName.isEmpty())
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Table name must be a non-empty string");
if (!tableName.matches("\\w+"))
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Table name contains illegal characters: " + tableName);

boolean isValidTableName(String name) {
    return name != null && !name.isEmpty() && name.matches("[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*");
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling validateTable (directly or via query processing paths that resolve a statement's table) with tableName == "" — e.g. a parsed statement whose table name defaulted to empty, or programmatic callers passing an empty string.

Common situations: Statement parsing bugs building empty table names; internal tooling or drivers invoking metadata APIs with unset table variables; templated queries where the table placeholder was not substituted.

Understand the failure class

Background: "must not be empty", "cannot be empty" — required-field validation errors across open-source libraries — this error's family across 41 libraries.

Related errors

• Can only unset '" + name + "'
• Invalid tuple literal for
• message (caller-provided message string)
• messageTemplate (caller-provided message template, 1 arg)
• messageTemplate (caller-provided message template, 2 args)

AI-assisted analysis of apache/cassandra@88fd0f6a0e (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/99f4e319d7f71990. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/java/org/apache/cassandra/schema/SchemaProvider.java:98

        return getTableMetadata(descriptor.ksname, descriptor.cfname).ref;
    }

    default ViewMetadata getView(String keyspaceName, String viewName)
    {
        assert keyspaceName != null;
        KeyspaceMetadata ksm = distributedKeyspaces().getNullable(keyspaceName);
        return (ksm == null) ? null : ksm.views.getNullable(viewName);
    }

    default Keyspaces getNonLocalStrategyKeyspaces()
    {
        return distributedKeyspaces().filter(keyspace -> keyspace.params.replication.klass != LocalStrategy.class);
    }

    default TableMetadata validateTable(String keyspaceName, String tableName)
    {
        if (tableName.isEmpty())
            throw new InvalidRequestException("non-empty table is required");

        KeyspaceMetadata keyspace = getKeyspaceMetadata(keyspaceName);
        if (keyspace == null)
            throw new KeyspaceNotDefinedException(String.format("keyspace %s does not exist", keyspaceName));

        TableMetadata metadata = keyspace.getTableOrViewNullable(tableName);
        if (metadata == null)
            throw new InvalidRequestException(String.format("table %s does not exist", tableName));

        return metadata;
    }

    default ColumnFamilyStore getColumnFamilyStoreInstance(TableId id)
    {
        TableMetadata metadata = getTableMetadata(id);
        if (metadata == null)
            return null;

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