hasura/graphql-engine · error

error in marshalling common: %w

Error message

error in marshalling common: %w

What it means

Create fails when yaml.Marshal of the consolidated actions config (common, which now holds the SDL-derived actions and custom types) returns an error. This is a serialization failure of the in-memory ActionConfig into actions.yaml, usually caused by fields that cannot round-trip through YAML.

Source

Thrown at cli/internal/metadataobject/actions/actions.go:236

		for oldTypeObjIndex, oldTypeObj := range oldAction.CustomTypes.Scalars {
			if customType.Name == oldTypeObj.Name {
				sdlFromResp.Types.Scalars[customTypeIndex].Description = oldAction.CustomTypes.Scalars[oldTypeObjIndex].Description
				sdlFromResp.Types.Scalars[customTypeIndex].Relationships = oldAction.CustomTypes.Scalars[oldTypeObjIndex].Relationships

				break
			}
		}
	}

	var common types.Common

	common.Actions = sdlFromResp.Actions
	common.CustomTypes = sdlFromResp.Types
	common.SetExportDefault()
	// write actions.yaml
	commonByt, err := yaml.Marshal(common)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.E(op, fmt.Errorf("error in marshalling common: %w", err))
	}

	err = os.WriteFile(filepath.Join(a.MetadataDir, a.Filename()), commonByt, 0o644)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.E(op, fmt.Errorf("error in writing %s file: %w", a.Filename(), err))
	}

	err = os.WriteFile(filepath.Join(a.MetadataDir, graphqlFileName), data, 0o644)
	if err != nil {
		return errors.E(op, fmt.Errorf("error in writing %s file: %w", graphqlFileName, err))
	}

	return nil
}

func (a *ActionConfig) Codegen(name string, derivePld types.DerivePayload) error {
	var op errors.Op = "actions.ActionConfig.Codegen"

View on GitHub (pinned to 724551b9ae)

Solutions

1. Check the wrapped error for the exact field yaml.Marshal choked on
2. Upgrade the hasura CLI and the actions codegen extension to matching versions and retry
3. Regenerate actions.yaml from scratch (delete and re-create) instead of merging with a hand-edited file
4. If a custom type is involved, simplify it and re-add fields incrementally to find the offender

// err is *errors.E from hasura CLI; inspect .Op()/kind and the wrapped yaml error
if err := actionCfg.Create(ctx); err != nil {
    var yamlErr *yaml.TypeError
    if errors.As(err, &yamlErr) {
        for _, line := range yamlErr.Errors { log.Printf("yaml field issue: %s", line) }
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling actions Create after the SDL conversion step, when the parsed action objects contain types, custom types, or handler definitions with fields yaml.Marshal cannot encode (e.g. maps with non-string keys, channels, unsupported marshaler output).

Common situations: A version mismatch between the CLI and the codegen extension producing action metadata with unexpected field shapes; hand-edited actions.yaml introducing incompatible structures; custom types with invalid YAML tags.

Related errors

• unable to marshal run_sql args in %s: %w
• error in marshalling actions, custom_types from metadata: %w
• error in marshaling common: %w
• parsing metadata to yaml: %w
• parsing yaml metadata to json: %w

AI-assisted analysis of hasura/graphql-engine@724551b9ae (2026-08-28). Data as JSON: /api/errors/87e9d19cb116044d. Report an issue: GitHub.