jackwener/OpenCLI · error · ArgumentError

amazon search query cannot be empty

Error message

amazon search query cannot be empty

What it means

An ArgumentError thrown by buildSearchUrl when the search query is empty or whitespace after cleaning. The library refuses to construct a search URL without a query because it would produce an invalid Amazon search endpoint. This is a fail-fast input validation error, not a scraping failure.

Source

Thrown at clis/amazon/shared.js:116

            .map((line) => line.replace(/\s+/g, ' ').trim())
            .filter(Boolean)
            .join('\n')
        : '';
}
export function uniqueNonEmpty(values) {
    return [...new Set(values.map((value) => cleanText(value)).filter(Boolean))];
}
export function buildProvenance(sourceUrl) {
    return {
        source_url: sourceUrl,
        fetched_at: new Date().toISOString(),
        strategy: STRATEGY,
    };
}
export function buildSearchUrl(query) {
    const normalized = cleanText(query);
    if (!normalized) {
        throw new ArgumentError('amazon search query cannot be empty');
    }
    return `${SEARCH_URL_PREFIX}${encodeURIComponent(normalized)}`;
}
export function extractAsin(input) {
    const normalized = cleanText(input);
    if (!normalized)
        return null;
    if (/^[A-Z0-9]{10}$/i.test(normalized)) {
        return normalized.toUpperCase();
    }
    const match = normalized.match(/\/(?:dp|gp\/product|product-reviews)\/([A-Z0-9]{10})/i);
    return match ? match[1].toUpperCase() : null;
}
export function amazonHostFromInput(input) {
    const normalized = cleanText(input);
    if (!normalized)
        return null;
    try {

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Pass a non-empty query string to the search command
2. Check the shell variable/env var/config value feeding the query is set and non-blank
3. Trim and validate the query in your script before invoking

Example fix

// before
const url = buildSearchUrl(query);
// after
if (!query?.trim()) throw new Error('query is required');
const url = buildSearchUrl(query);

const q = (process.env.SEARCH_QUERY ?? '').trim();
if (!q) throw new Error('SEARCH_QUERY is empty — set it before calling amazon search');

const isNonEmptyString = (v) => typeof v === 'string' && v.trim().length > 0;

try {
  const url = buildSearchUrl(query);
} catch (err) {
  if (err.message.includes('query cannot be empty')) {
    // fall back to a default query or surface a config error
  } else throw err;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling buildSearchUrl('') or buildSearchUrl(' ') directly, or passing an empty --query/positional argument to the amazon search command (e.g. from an unquoted shell variable that expands to nothing).

Common situations: Shell script with an unset variable: `opencli amazon search "$Q"` where Q is empty; reading the query from a config file or env var that is missing; trimming reduced the input to nothing.

Related errors

• oeis ${label} cannot be empty
• INVALID_ARGUMENT
• INVALID_ARGUMENT
• ${label} is required
• ${label} returned an unexpected payload shape; expected an o

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2e843779d28d80a1. Report an issue: GitHub.