flowable/flowable-engine · error · FlowableException

malformed url

Error message

malformed url: ${url}

What it means

EventDefinitionParse.sourceUrl(String) converts the given string into a java.net.URL to use as the parse source. If the string is not a well-formed URL (bad protocol syntax, illegal characters, unknown scheme), java.net.URL throws MalformedURLException, which is rethrown as a FlowableException with the offending url in the message.

Solutions

1. Fix the url string to be a fully valid absolute URL, e.g. add the scheme: 'https://host/path' instead of 'host/path'
2. If you meant a classpath/file resource, use sourceResource(resource) instead of sourceUrl(url)
3. Pre-validate with try { new URL(url); } catch (MalformedURLException e) { ... } and log the reason
4. URL-encode illegal characters (spaces -> %20) before passing

Example fix

// before
parse.sourceUrl("events/order-event.json");
// after
parse.sourceResource("events/order-event.json");
// or a valid URL:
parse.sourceUrl("https://config.example.com/events/order-event.json");

boolean isValidUrl(String s) {
    if (s == null) return false;
    try { new java.net.URL(s); return true; } catch (java.net.MalformedURLException e) { return false; }
}

boolean isUsableUrl(String s) { return s != null && s.matches("^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9+.-]*:.*"); }

try {
    parse.sourceUrl(url);
} catch (org.flowable.common.engine.api.FlowableException e) {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("Not a valid URL: " + url, e);
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling EventDefinitionParse.sourceUrl(String) with a string that fails new URL(url) parsing: missing protocol (e.g. 'resources/events.json'), typos in scheme ('http:/'), spaces or other illegal characters, or an unsupported scheme.

Common situations: Hardcoded resource paths passed instead of URLs; environment-specific config where a base URL is empty or mis-concatenated; users confusing sourceResource (classpath/file resource) with sourceUrl.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid URL" errors: why new URL(), URI.parse, and reqwest::Url reject your string — missing scheme, whitespace, and bad path format — this error's family across 39 libraries.

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

• Invalid channel definition id : null
• Invalid event definition id : null
• invalid: multiple sources
• no channel definitions deployed with key
• no deployed channel definition found with id

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b18f7d8a6d2ba915. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at modules/flowable-event-registry/src/main/java/org/flowable/eventregistry/impl/parser/EventDefinitionParse.java:131

    public EventDefinitionParse setSourceSystemId(String sourceSystemId) {
        this.sourceSystemId = sourceSystemId;
        return this;
    }

    public EventDefinitionParse sourceUrl(URL url) {
        if (name == null) {
            name(url.toString());
        }
        setStreamSource(new UrlStreamSource(url));
        return this;
    }

    public EventDefinitionParse sourceUrl(String url) {
        try {
            return sourceUrl(new URL(url));
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            throw new FlowableException("malformed url: " + url, e);
        }
    }

    public EventDefinitionParse sourceResource(String resource) {
        if (name == null) {
            name(resource);
        }
        setStreamSource(new ResourceStreamSource(resource));
        return this;
    }

    public EventDefinitionParse sourceString(String string) {
        if (name == null) {
            name("string");
        }
        setStreamSource(new StringStreamSource(string));
        return this;
    }

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