elastic/elasticsearch · error · IllegalArgumentException

Empty POINT cannot be represented in WKB

Error message

Empty POINT cannot be represented in WKB

What it means

writeWKBPoint (line 274) is the WKT-to-WKB direct converter for the POINT type. After reading the type word, it consumes the next token via nextEmptyOrOpen (line 281); if that token is 'EMPTY', it throws IllegalArgumentException because, per the toWKB rule (error 562), WKB cannot encode an empty Point. This is the WKT-input variant of the same format limitation.

Source

Thrown at libs/geo/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/geometry/utils/WellKnownBinary.java:282

            case "multilinestring" -> writeWKBMultiLineString(stream, out, scratch, explicitZ, validator);
            case "polygon" -> writeWKBPolygon(stream, out, scratch, coerce, explicitZ, validator);
            case "multipolygon" -> writeWKBMultiPolygon(stream, out, scratch, coerce, explicitZ, validator);
            case "geometrycollection" -> writeWKBGeometryCollection(stream, out, scratch, coerce, depth, explicitZ, validator);
            case "circle" -> writeWKBCircle(stream, out, scratch, explicitZ, validator);
            case "bbox" -> writeWKBBBox(stream, out, scratch, explicitZ, validator);
            default -> throw new ParseException("Unknown geometry type: " + type, stream.lineno());
        }
    }

    private static void writeWKBPoint(
        StreamTokenizer stream,
        ByteArrayOutputStream out,
        ByteBuffer scratch,
        boolean explicitZ,
        GeometryValidator validator
    ) throws IOException, ParseException {
        if (WellKnownText.nextEmptyOrOpen(stream).equals(WellKnownText.EMPTY)) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Empty POINT cannot be represented in WKB");
        }
        double x = WellKnownText.nextNumber(stream);
        double y = WellKnownText.nextNumber(stream);
        double z = Double.NaN;
        if (WellKnownText.isNumberNext(stream)) {
            z = WellKnownText.nextNumber(stream);
        }
        WellKnownText.nextCloser(stream);
        WellKnownText.checkZorMAttribute(explicitZ, Double.isNaN(z) == false);
        validator.validateCoordinate(x, y, z);
        boolean hasZ = Double.isNaN(z) == false;
        writeInt(out, scratch, hasZ ? 1001 : 1);
        writeDouble(out, scratch, x);
        writeDouble(out, scratch, y);
        if (hasZ) {
            writeDouble(out, scratch, z);
        }
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to db6a809a66)

Solutions

1. Detect and skip 'POINT EMPTY' (case-insensitive, trimmed) before calling fromWKT, treating it as absent data.
2. Normalize empty points to a concrete coordinate or to a null/absent document upstream.
3. If you must preserve emptiness, use a format that supports it (WKT for storage, or a sentinel schema field) rather than WKB.

Example fix

// before
byte[] wkb = WellKnownBinary.fromWKT("POINT EMPTY", ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN, false); // throws

// after
String wkt = wktInput.trim();
if (wkt.equalsIgnoreCase("POINT EMPTY")) {
    return null; // or handle absence
}
byte[] wkb = WellKnownBinary.fromWKT(wkt, ByteOrder.LITTLE_ENDIAN, false);

boolean isPointEmpty(String wkt) {
    return wkt.trim().equalsIgnoreCase("POINT EMPTY");
}

// lexical guard — WKT has no object yet
static boolean isEmptyPointWkt(String wkt) {
    return wkt.trim().equalsIgnoreCase("POINT EMPTY");
}

try {
    return WellKnownBinary.fromWKT(wkt, bo, coerce, v);
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
    if (wkt.trim().equalsIgnoreCase("POINT EMPTY")) return null;
    throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling WellKnownBinary.fromWKT("POINT EMPTY", byteOrder, coerce[, validator]). The exact trigger is the literal WKT token 'POINT' followed by 'EMPTY' (case-insensitive type, but EMPTY keyword recognized by nextEmptyOrOpen).

Common situations: Indexing optional-location fields where the source represents absence as 'POINT EMPTY' in WKT. Round-tripping data that used WKT's empty-point syntax. Ingest pipelines that pass through user-supplied WKT without normalizing empty points.

Related errors

• Empty
• Empty CIRCLE cannot be represented in WKB
• Empty ENVELOPE cannot be represented in WKB
• Unknown geometry type:
• holes must have the same number of dimensions as the polygon

AI-assisted analysis of elastic/elasticsearch@db6a809a66 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5a6a7b603e97f9ac. Report an issue: GitHub.