invoke-ai/InvokeAI · error

Absolute paths not allowed in subfolder path

Error message

Absolute paths not allowed in subfolder path

What it means

_validate_subfolder rejects subfolders that start with '/', i.e. absolute paths, to prevent escaping the outputs folder entirely. Only relative subfolder names under the base folder are allowed.

Source

Thrown at invokeai/app/services/image_files/image_files_disk.py:285

        # Ensure the image path is within the base folder to prevent directory traversal
        resolved_base = base_folder.resolve()
        resolved_image_path = image_path.resolve()

        if not resolved_image_path.is_relative_to(resolved_base):
            raise ValueError("Image path outside outputs folder, potential directory traversal detected")

        return resolved_image_path

    @staticmethod
    def _validate_subfolder(subfolder: str) -> None:
        """Validates a subfolder path to prevent directory traversal while allowing controlled subdirectories."""
        if not subfolder:
            return
        if "\\" in subfolder:
            raise ValueError("Backslashes not allowed in subfolder path")
        if subfolder.startswith("/"):
            raise ValueError("Absolute paths not allowed in subfolder path")
        parts = subfolder.split("/")
        for part in parts:
            if part == "..":
                raise ValueError("Parent directory references not allowed in subfolder path")
            if part == "":
                raise ValueError("Empty path segments not allowed in subfolder path")

    def validate_path(self, path: Union[str, Path]) -> bool:
        """Validates the path given for an image or thumbnail."""
        path = path if isinstance(path, Path) else Path(path)
        return path.exists()

    def get_workflow(self, image_name: str, image_subfolder: str = "") -> str | None:
        image = self.get(image_name, image_subfolder=image_subfolder)
        workflow = image.info.get("invokeai_workflow", None)
        if isinstance(workflow, str):
            return workflow
        return None

View on GitHub (pinned to 0b6a024f2f)

Solutions

1. Convert to relative: strip the known base prefix before calling
2. Use only bare relative names like '2024/08'
3. Validate at the boundary that subfolder.startswith('/') is false and reject

Example fix

// before
sub = '/home/user/outputs/2024'
// after
sub = '2024'  # or sub = os.path.relpath(p, base).replace('\\', '/')

from pathlib import PurePosixPath
def is_relative_subfolder(s: str) -> bool:
    return bool(s) and not s.startswith('/') and '\\' not in s
if not is_relative_subfolder(sub): raise ValueError('subfolder must be relative, /-separated')

def is_relative_subfolder(s: object) -> bool:
    return isinstance(s, str) and s != '' and not s.startswith('/')

try:
    service.get(name, image_subfolder=subfolder)
except ValueError as e:
    if 'Absolute paths' in str(e):
        sub = posixpath.relpath(sub, base) if sub.startswith(base) else ''
        service.get(name, image_subfolder=sub)

When it happens

Trigger: Passing image_subfolder='/etc' or '/tmp/x' to get/save; deriving the subfolder from an absolute path returned by a file dialog.

Common situations: Storing absolute paths in board metadata; users pasting absolute paths into configuration; code that assumes subfolder can be absolute.

Related errors

• Backslashes not allowed in subfolder path
• Empty path segments not allowed in subfolder path
• Empty path segments not allowed in subfolder path
• No external provider config fields provided
• str(e)

AI-assisted analysis of invoke-ai/InvokeAI@0b6a024f2f (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/cd95714312e2f802. Report an issue: GitHub.