influxdata/influxdb · error · NewRoleNameError

role name cannot be empty

Error message

role name cannot be empty

What it means

NewRoleNameError::Empty is returned when validating a new role name that is an empty string. Role names must be non-empty, within ROLE_NAME_MAX_LENGTH, and contain only alphanumeric characters plus the allowed separator set.

Solutions

1. Provide a non-empty role name in the creation request.
2. Validate before submission: check !name.is_empty() (and length/charset rules) client-side.
3. Fix the template/config/trimming logic that produced the empty value.

Example fix

// before
let name = ""; // empty
let role = RoleName::new(name)?;
// after
let name = "engineering-writers";
let role = RoleName::new(name)?;

fn validate_role_name(name: &str, max: usize) -> Result<(), NewRoleNameError> {
    if name.is_empty() { return Err(NewRoleNameError::Empty); }
    if name.len() > max { return Err(NewRoleNameError::TooLong); }
    Ok(())
}

match RoleName::new(&input) {
    Ok(name) => /* ... */,
    Err(NewRoleNameError::Empty) => bail!("role name is required"),
    Err(e) => bail!("invalid role name: {e}"),
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling the role-creation API (new role name construction in influxdb3_authz/src/role/role.rs) with an empty name string.

Common situations: An empty role-name field in an API request body or CLI flag; a config/templating variable that expanded to nothing; trimming that reduced a whitespace-only name to "".

Understand the failure class

Background: "must not be empty", "cannot be empty" — required-field validation errors across open-source libraries — this error's family across 41 libraries.

Related errors

• invalid resource name
• missing resource id
• missing resource name
• unknown system resource identifier
• action not supported

AI-assisted analysis of influxdata/influxdb@06200ef96b (2026-09-19). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9c3b64b5eab5ce0a. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at influxdb3_authz/src/role/role.rs:88

    pub fn as_str(&self) -> &str {
        &self.0
    }

    pub fn into_inner(self) -> String {
        self.0
    }
}

impl std::fmt::Display for RoleName {
    fn fmt(&self, f: &mut std::fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> std::fmt::Result {
        write!(f, "{}", self.0)
    }
}

#[derive(Debug, Clone, Error)]
pub enum NewRoleNameError {
    #[error("role name cannot be empty")]
    Empty,
    #[error("role name exceeds maximum length of {ROLE_NAME_MAX_LENGTH} characters")]
    TooLong,
    #[error("role name contains invalid characters: only alphanumeric and [{0}] are allowed")]
    InvalidCharacters(String),
}

#[derive(Debug, Clone, PartialEq, Eq, Serialize, Deserialize)]
pub struct RoleDescription(String);

impl RoleDescription {
    pub fn as_str(&self) -> &str {
        &self.0
    }

    pub fn new(description: &str) -> Result<Self, NewRoleDescriptionError> {
        if description.is_empty() {
            return Err(NewRoleDescriptionError::Empty);

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