hibernate/hibernate-orm · error · IllegalStateException

Can't find ending quote of key name

Error message

Can't find ending quote of key name

What it means

consumeQuotedString() asks nextQuote() to find the closing '"' of a string literal; nextQuote() scans to the end of input and returns -1 when no unescaped closing quote exists (a backslash makes it skip the following character, so a literal ending in a lone '\' also never terminates). The reader therefore cannot delimit the string/key and throws — the JSON contains an unterminated string literal.

Source

Thrown at hibernate-core/src/main/java/org/hibernate/type/format/StringJsonDocumentReader.java:364

		return allGood?(this.jsonValueEnd-this.jsonValueStart):-1;
	}
	/**
	 * Consumes a quoted value
	 * @return the length of this value. can be 0, -1 in case of error
	 */
	private void consumeQuotedString() {

		// be sure we are at a meaningful place
		// key name are unquoted
		moveTo( StringJsonDocumentMarker.QUOTE.getMarkerCharacter() );

		// skip the quote we are positioned on.
		this.position++;

		//locate ending quote
		int endingQuote = nextQuote();
		if (endingQuote == -1) {
			throw new IllegalStateException("Can't find ending quote of key name");
		}

		this.jsonValueEnd = endingQuote;
		this.jsonValueStart = position;

		this.position =  endingQuote + 1;

	}

	/**
	 * Ensures that the current state is on value.
	 * @throws IllegalStateException if not on "value" state
	 */
	private void ensureValueState() throws IllegalStateException {
		if ( (this.processingStates.getCurrent() != JsonProcessingState.OBJECT ) &&
			this.processingStates.getCurrent() != JsonProcessingState.ARRAY)  {
			throw new IllegalStateException( "unexpected processing state: " + this.processingStates.getCurrent() );
		}

View on GitHub (pinned to fad1729dce)

Solutions

1. Repair the value: terminate the string literal, honoring escape rules
2. Fix the producer to use a real JSON serializer instead of concatenation
3. Validate on write with a strict parser
4. Catch IllegalStateException to quarantine affected rows

Example fix

-- before: key literal never closed
UPDATE entity_table SET json_col = '{"key: 1}';
-- after: properly terminated literal
UPDATE entity_table SET json_col = '{"key": 1}';

static boolean allStringLiteralsClosed(String json) {
    boolean inString = false;
    for (int i = 0; i < json.length(); i++) {
        char c = json.charAt(i);
        if (inString && c == '\\') { i++; continue; }
        if (c == '"') inString = !inString;
    }
    return !inString;
}

try {
    entity = session.find(MyEntity.class, id);
} catch (IllegalStateException e) {
    if (e.getMessage() != null && e.getMessage().startsWith("Can't find ending quote")) {
        throw new DataQualityException("Unterminated string literal in JSON column", e);
    }
    throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Values like {"key: 1} (closing quote missing around the key), "abc\ (token ends with a bare escape character at end of input), or any string/key truncated mid-literal at the end of the column value.

Common situations: Truncated JSON columns; hand-edited values; writers that build JSON via string concatenation and forget the closing quote; data where an escape sequence was cut in half by truncation.

Related errors

• unexpected quote read in current processing state {}
• Unrecognized marker: {}
• unexpected read [{}] in current processing state {}
• unexpected end of JSON [{}] in current processing state {}
• Expected JSON object end, but none found.

AI-assisted analysis of hibernate/hibernate-orm@fad1729dce (2026-08-22). Data as JSON: /api/errors/93fef7eb473c54ad. Report an issue: GitHub.