flarum/framework · error · InvalidArgumentException

Paths are not possible in websocket connections.

Error message

Paths are not possible in websocket connections.

What it means

The realtime extension's daemonUrl() parses the daemon websocket URL and rejects URLs containing a path component, since websocket connections to the daemon go to host:port only; it throws InvalidArgumentException otherwise.

Solutions

1. Remove the path from the configured URL, keeping scheme://host:port (e.g. wss://realtime.example.com).
2. If a path is needed for proxies, handle path routing at the proxy level, not in the daemon URL config.
3. Verify with parse_url semantics: anything after host/port (leading '/') is rejected.

Example fix

// before
(new Extend\Realtime())->daemonUrl('https://example.com/realtime')
// after
(new Extend\Realtime())->daemonUrl('https://realtime.example.com:8080')

$parsed = parse_url($url); if (! empty($parsed['path'])) { throw new InvalidArgumentException('daemon URL must not contain a path'); }

try { $ext->daemonUrl($url); } catch (InvalidArgumentException $e) { /* strip path and retry */ }

When it happens

Trigger: Configuring the realtime daemon URL with a path suffix, e.g. http://host:8080/socket or wss://example.com/realtime, when calling Extend\Realtime::daemonUrl() in the extension bootstrap.

Common situations: Copy-pasting a full app URL including a base path; assuming the daemon needs a route prefix; reverse-proxy setups where the public URL includes a path.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid URL" / "URL cannot be empty": fix the malformed or missing URL behind request-construction failures — this error's family across 50 libraries.

Related errors

• Invalid auth signature provided.
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• Please specify a database driver.

AI-assisted analysis of flarum/framework@4b939f6853 (2026-09-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/782b991bddf5f3e2. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at extensions/realtime/src/Extend/Realtime.php:103

    // -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    // Server configuration
    // -------------------------------------------------------------------------

    /**
     * Provide the full url to the running `php flarum realtime:serve` daemon.
     * In case you proxy it, use the outside URL.
     *
     * @example https://wss.flarum.site
     * @example https://flarum.site:9001
     *
     * @see `php flarum realtime:serve --help`
     */
    public function daemonUrl(string $url): self
    {
        $parsed = parse_url($url);

        if (! empty($parsed['path'])) {
            throw new InvalidArgumentException('Paths are not possible in websocket connections.');
        }

        $this->configuration['php-client-secure'] = ($parsed['scheme'] ?? 'http') === 'https';
        $this->configuration['php-client-host'] = $parsed['host'] ?? '';
        $this->configuration['php-client-port'] = $parsed['port'] ?? null;

        $this->configuration['js-client-secure'] = ($parsed['scheme'] ?? 'http') === 'https';
        $this->configuration['js-client-host'] = $parsed['host'] ?? '';
        $this->configuration['js-client-port'] = $parsed['port'] ?? null;

        return $this;
    }

    /**
     * Set maximum number of allowed websocket connections.
     */
    public function maxConnections(int $connections): self
    {

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