inancgumus/learngo · error

record.uniques cannot be negative

Error message

record.uniques cannot be negative

What it means

Sentinel validation error from the pipe package's internal validate() guard: a decoded record has a negative uniques value. It fires when the uniques column in JSON or text input is below zero; like visits, uniques is a count and must be non-negative, so validate() rejects the record.

Source

Thrown at logparser/v5/pipe/record.go:102

func parseStr(name, v string) (int, error) {
	n, err := strconv.Atoi(v)
	if err != nil {
		return 0, fmt.Errorf("Record.UnmarshalText %q: %v", name, err)
	}
	return n, nil
}

// validate whether a parsed record is valid or not.
func validate(r record) (err error) {
	switch {
	case r.domain == "":
		err = errors.New("record.domain cannot be empty")
	case r.page == "":
		err = errors.New("record.page cannot be empty")
	case r.visits < 0:
		err = errors.New("record.visits cannot be negative")
	case r.uniques < 0:
		err = errors.New("record.uniques cannot be negative")
	}
	return
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 3c475a78e5)

Solutions

1. Clamp or fix negative uniques at the data source.
2. Audit upstream diff/aggregation logic for subtraction that can go negative.
3. Skip and log offending records during ingestion.
4. Relax the check only if negative uniques are valid in your pipeline.

Example fix

// before
{"domain":"example.com","page":"/","uniques":-1}
// after
{"domain":"example.com","page":"/","uniques":0}

if rec.Uniques < 0 {
    rec.Uniques = 0 // clamp, or reject the record
}

func hasValidUniques(r record) bool { return r.uniques >= 0 }

var rec record
err := rec.UnmarshalJSON(data)
if err != nil {
    if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "record.uniques cannot be negative") {
        log.Printf("dropping record with negative uniques: %s", data)
        return nil
    }
    return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Unmarshaling a record where uniques < 0, e.g. "uniques": -2 in JSON or a negative text field in the uniques column.

Common situations: Same ETL/diff bugs as visits: subtracting counts, bad manual edits, or signed-column misparse during import.

Understand the failure class

Background: Schema validation failed / invalid input schema: payload rejected because its shape doesn't match the expected schema — this error's family across 28 libraries.

Related errors

• record.visits cannot be negative
• invalid number
• record.domain cannot be empty
• record.page cannot be empty
• record.domain cannot be empty|record.page cannot be empty|re

AI-assisted analysis of inancgumus/learngo@3c475a78e5 (2026-09-02). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bd8050fb72bbfbbd. Report an issue: GitHub.