What causes "not found: %v" in cayleygraph/cayley?

Call qs.ValueOf(node) per node first and skip nil results before batch-calling RefsOf

not found: %v

Error message

not found: %v

What it means

RefsOf resolves a batch of node values to refs by calling ValueOf for each. If ValueOf returns nil refs for a node — meaning the node does not exist in the store — RefsOf fails hard with "not found: %v" rather than inserting a nil entry.

Source

Thrown at graph/refs/refs.go:170

		if err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
	}
	return out, nil
}

func RefsOf(ctx context.Context, qs Namer, nodes []quad.Value) ([]Ref, error) {
	if bq, ok := qs.(BatchNamer); ok {
		return bq.RefsOf(ctx, nodes)
	}
	values := make([]Ref, len(nodes))
	for i, node := range nodes {
		value, err := qs.ValueOf(node)
		if err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
		if value == nil {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("not found: %v", node)
		}
		values[i] = value
	}
	return values, nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 81dcd7d73e)

Solutions

Call qs.ValueOf(node) per node first and skip nil results before batch-calling RefsOf
Verify the node exists (e.g. via NameOf round-trip or an iterator contains check)
Reload/refresh the node list from the same store that RefsOf will query
Handle the returned error and filter out the missing node, then retry the batch

Example fix

// before
refs, err := graph.RefsOf(qs, nodes) // fails if any node is missing
// after
var known []graph.Value
for _, n := range nodes {
    if v, err := qs.ValueOf(n); err == nil && v != nil {
        known = append(known, n)
    }
}
refs, err := graph.RefsOf(qs, known)

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

var known []graph.Value
for _, n := range nodes {
    if v, err := qs.ValueOf(n); err != nil { return err } else if v != nil { known = append(known, n) }
}

Type guard

func nodeExists(qs graph.QuadStore, n graph.Value) bool {
    v, err := qs.ValueOf(n)
    return err == nil && v != nil
}

Try / catch

refs, err := graph.RefsOf(qs, nodes)
if err != nil && strings.HasPrefix(err.Error(), "not found:") {
    // re-filter the list and retry, or skip the missing node
}

Prevention

Re-derive node lists from the same store right before use
Filter out nil results from ValueOf before batching
Avoid caching graph.Value across store rebuilds
Treat user-supplied node names as possibly nonexistent

When it happens

Trigger: Calling graph.RefsOf(qs, nodes) with any node value absent from the QuadStore (deleted node, typo'd/never-written value, stale cached value from another store).

Common situations: Iterating a cached list of node values after data was deleted; passing user-supplied node strings that were never inserted; cross-store lookups.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Not found" and "does not exist" errors: why "Task not found", "No such folder", and "Can't find" fire when a lookup comes back empty — this error's family across 14 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of cayleygraph/cayley@81dcd7d73e (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ceae84779dac4222. Report an issue: GitHub.