no records were read. JSON record list is either empty or no

Error message

no records were read. JSON record list is either empty or not properly formatted. Aborting identifytxs

What it means

IdentifyTxs reads a diff record list JSON (produced by the ledger compare utility) to identify transactions touching divergent keys. If the JSON loaded successfully but contains zero diff records, there is nothing to process and this error aborts the run.

Source

Thrown at internal/ledgerutil/identifytxs/identifytxs.go:48

	ledgersDataDirName = "ledgersData"
	nsJoiner           = "$$"
	pvtDataPrefix      = "p"
	hashDataPrefix     = "h"
)

// IdentifyTxs - IdentifyTxs identifies all transactions related to a list of records (namespace / key pairs)
// Tool was originally created to map list of divergent records from ledgerutil compare output to their respective transactions
// to identify list of transactions that have potentially caused divergent state
// Returns two block numbers that represent the starting and ending blocks of the transaction search range
func IdentifyTxs(recPath string, fsPath string, outputDirLoc string) (uint64, uint64, error) {
	// Read diffRecord list from json
	var records *models.DiffRecordList
	records, err := jsonrw.LoadRecords(recPath)
	if err != nil {
		return 0, 0, err
	}
	if len(records.DiffRecords) == 0 {
		return 0, 0, errors.Errorf("no records were read. JSON record list is either empty or not properly formatted. Aborting identifytxs")
	}

	// Output directory creation
	outputDirName := fmt.Sprintf("%s_identified_transactions", records.Ledgerid)
	outputDirPath := filepath.Join(outputDirLoc, outputDirName)

	empty, err := fileutil.CreateDirIfMissing(outputDirPath)
	if err != nil {
		return 0, 0, err
	}
	if !empty {
		return 0, 0, errors.Errorf("%s already exists in %s. Choose a different location or remove the existing results. Aborting identifytxs", outputDirName, outputDirLoc)
	}

	// Get recordsMap from json
	inputKeyMapWrapper, err := generateRecordsMap(records.DiffRecords, outputDirPath)
	if err != nil {
		return 0, 0, err

View on GitHub (pinned to 2736b63f8f)

Solutions

Check the input JSON has a non-empty records array (e.g. {"diffRecords":[...]}) under the given path
Re-run ledgerutil compare to regenerate a valid diff record list if the source file is empty
Verify the correct file path was passed as the recPath argument

Example fix

// before
{ "ledgerid": "myledger", "diffRecords": [] }
// after
{ "ledgerid": "myledger", "diffRecords": [ { "namespace": "ns", "key": "k1", "records": [...] } ] }

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// Go: verify the diff JSON has records before calling IdentifyTxs
data, _ := os.ReadFile(recPath)
var probe struct{ DiffRecords []json.RawMessage `json:"diffRecords"` }
if json.Unmarshal(data, &probe) != nil || len(probe.DiffRecords) == 0 {
    return errors.New("diff record JSON is empty or malformed")
}

Try / catch

if _, _, err := ledgerutil.IdentifyTxs(recPath, outDir); err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "no records were read") {
        return fmt.Errorf("check the input JSON produced by ledgerutil compare: %w", err)
    }
    return err
}

Prevention

Confirm ledgerutil compare produced a non-empty diff list before running identifytxs
Validate the JSON structure (diffRecords array with entries) before invoking
Pass the exact compare output path, not a directory or unrelated file

When it happens

Trigger: Running ledgerutil identifytxs with a JSON file that is empty, an empty diff-records array, or a file whose structure doesn't match DiffRecordList (so records parsed as empty).

Common situations: Pointing the tool at the wrong or truncated output of ledgerutil compare; compare found no divergences but identifytxs was still run; hand-edited JSON removed records.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of hyperledger/fabric@2736b63f8f (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/aeb7d7c79f590b13. Report an issue: GitHub.