henrygd/beszel · error

error parsing URL: %v

Error message

error parsing URL: %v

What it means

SendShoutrrrAlert sends alerts via a Shoutrrr service URL (e.g. discord://token@id, smtp://...). The URL is parsed with url.Parse first; on failure the raw error is wrapped as `error parsing URL: %v`, meaning the notification URL string is malformed.

Source

Thrown at internal/alerts/alerts.go:256

		From: mail.Address{
			Address: am.hub.Settings().Meta.SenderAddress,
			Name:    am.hub.Settings().Meta.SenderName,
		},
	}
	err = am.hub.NewMailClient().Send(&message)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	am.hub.Logger().Info("Sent email alert", "to", message.To, "subj", message.Subject)
	return nil
}

// SendShoutrrrAlert sends an alert via a Shoutrrr URL
func (am *AlertManager) SendShoutrrrAlert(notificationUrl, title, message, link, linkText string) error {
	// Parse the URL
	parsedURL, err := url.Parse(notificationUrl)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error parsing URL: %v", err)
	}
	scheme := parsedURL.Scheme
	queryParams := parsedURL.Query()

	// Add title
	if _, ok := supportsTitle[scheme]; ok {
		queryParams.Add("title", title)
	} else if scheme == "mattermost" {
		// use markdown title for mattermost
		message = "##### " + title + "\n\n" + message
	} else if scheme == "generic" && queryParams.Has("template") {
		// add title as property if using generic with template json
		titleKey := queryParams.Get("titlekey")
		if titleKey == "" {
			titleKey = "title"
		}
		queryParams.Add("$"+titleKey, title)
	} else {

View on GitHub (pinned to b38fb7dafa)

Solutions

  1. Percent-encode reserved characters in the URL's userinfo portion: `%` → %25, `@` → %40, spaces → %20.
  2. Log/inspect the exact notificationUrl value; strip surrounding whitespace, quotes, and invisible characters.
  3. Use shoutrrr's URL generator (`shoutrrr generate <service>`) instead of hand-assembling the URL.
  4. If a password contains reserved characters, escape it or move credentials to a mechanism that doesn't require URL encoding.

Example fix

// before
notificationUrl := "discord://my@token@123456"
// after
notificationUrl := "discord://my%40token@123456" // @ in token percent-encoded
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// validate the notification URL before sending
if _, err := url.Parse(notificationUrl); err != nil {
	return fmt.Errorf("invalid shoutrrr URL %q: %w", notificationUrl, err)
}

Type guard

func validShoutrrrURL(u string) bool {
	parsed, err := url.Parse(u)
	return err == nil && parsed.Scheme != ""
}

Try / catch

if err := am.SendShoutrrrAlert(notificationUrl, title, msg, link, linkText); err != nil {
	if strings.HasPrefix(err.Error(), "error parsing URL") {
		log.Printf("check notification URL encoding for %%, @, spaces: %v", err)
	} else {
		return err
	}
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: url.Parse(notificationUrl) errors: invalid characters (unescaped spaces, control chars, a stray `%` like `100%`), or misplaced reserved characters such as an extra `@` or unescaped password, e.g. `discord://my@token@123456`.

Common situations: Users paste service URLs into config/env with unescaped special characters in tokens/passwords; template placeholders left unrendered; smart quotes or trailing whitespace from copy/paste.

Related errors


AI-assisted analysis of henrygd/beszel@b38fb7dafa (2026-08-31). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5aff131dba708185. Report an issue: GitHub.