crewAIInc/crewAI · error · ValueError

URL cannot contain whitespace

Error message

URL cannot contain whitespace

What it means

Pydantic field_validator error from SeleniumScrapingToolSchema when the website_url contains any whitespace character (regex \s match). Unencoded spaces, tabs, or newlines break HTTP navigation and Chrome's URL handling, so the validator rejects them outright instead of letting the driver fail ambiguously. URLs that need spaces must percent-encode them (%20).

Source

Thrown at lib/crewai-tools/src/crewai_tools/tools/selenium_scraping_tool/selenium_scraping_tool.py:46

    def validate_website_url(cls, v: str) -> str:
        if not v:
            raise ValueError("Website URL cannot be empty")

        if len(v) > 2048:  # Common maximum URL length
            raise ValueError("URL is too long (max 2048 characters)")

        if not re.match(r"^https?://", v):
            raise ValueError("URL must start with http:// or https://")

        try:
            result = urlparse(v)
            if not all([result.scheme, result.netloc]):
                raise ValueError("Invalid URL format")
        except Exception as e:
            raise ValueError(f"Invalid URL: {e!s}") from e

        if re.search(r"\s", v):
            raise ValueError("URL cannot contain whitespace")

        return v


class SeleniumScrapingTool(BaseTool):
    name: str = "Read a website content"
    description: str = "A tool that can be used to read a website content."
    args_schema: type[BaseModel] = SeleniumScrapingToolSchema
    website_url: str | None = None
    driver: Any | None = None
    cookie: dict[str, Any] | None = None
    wait_time: int | None = 3
    css_element: str | None = None
    return_html: bool | None = False
    _by: Any | None = None
    package_dependencies: list[str] = Field(
        default_factory=lambda: ["selenium", "webdriver-manager"]
    )

View on GitHub (pinned to 754d7323be)

Solutions

1. Percent-encode spaces: 'https://example.com/my%20page'.
2. Strip/trim the URL before passing it — but note strip() only fixes leading/trailing whitespace, interior whitespace must be encoded.
3. Reject or clean whitespace-bearing URLs at ingest time when collecting them from users or files.

Example fix

# before
tool = SeleniumScrapingTool(website_url="https://example.com/my page", css_element="article")

# after
from urllib.parse import quote
clean = "https://example.com/" + quote("my page")  # .../my%20page
tool = SeleniumScrapingTool(website_url=clean, css_element="article")

import re

url = url.strip()
if re.search(r"\s", url):
    raise ValueError("URL contains whitespace — encode it (e.g. space -> %20)")
# or auto-fix: url = re.sub(r"\s", "%20", url)

from pydantic import ValidationError

try:
    tool = SeleniumScrapingTool(website_url=url, css_element=css)
except ValidationError as e:
    if "whitespace" in str(e):
        import re
        tool = SeleniumScrapingTool(website_url=re.sub(r"\s", "%20", url), css_element=css)
    else:
        raise

When it happens

Trigger: Passing 'https://example.com/my page' (raw space), a URL copied from a wrapped chat/log line that contains a newline, or a trailing/interior tab from spreadsheet/CSV data.

Common situations: Copy-pasting URLs from documents or chat where line-wrapping inserted breaks; CSV/Excel exports with untrimmed cells; LLM agents emitting URLs with literal spaces in the path.

Related errors

• Website URL cannot be empty
• URL is too long (max 2048 characters)
• URL must start with http:// or https://
• Invalid URL format
• Invalid URL: {e!s}

AI-assisted analysis of crewAIInc/crewAI@754d7323be (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9810ee54d2c5d71f. Report an issue: GitHub.