jackwener/OpenCLI · error · ArgumentError

archive wayback url cannot be empty

Error message

archive wayback url cannot be empty

What it means

The `archive wayback` command requires a positional `url` argument identifying the site to look up. This ArgumentError is thrown when the argument is missing or resolves to an empty/whitespace-only string, before any network request is made.

Source

Thrown at clis/archive/wayback.js:35

}

cli({
    site: 'archive',
    name: 'wayback',
    access: 'read',
    description: 'Look up the closest Wayback Machine snapshot for a URL.',
    domain: 'archive.org',
    strategy: Strategy.PUBLIC,
    browser: false,
    args: [
        { name: 'url', positional: true, required: true, help: 'URL to look up (with or without scheme).' },
        { name: 'timestamp', type: 'string', required: false, help: 'Target timestamp (YYYY[MM[DD[hh[mm[ss]]]]] or ISO date). Defaults to most recent snapshot.' },
    ],
    columns: ['original_url', 'requested_timestamp', 'snapshot_timestamp', 'snapshot_url', 'status'],
    func: async (args) => {
        const target = String(args.url ?? '').trim();
        if (!target) {
            throw new ArgumentError(
                'archive wayback url cannot be empty',
                'Example: opencli archive wayback wikipedia.org',
            );
        }
        const timestamp = args.timestamp ? normalizeTimestamp(args.timestamp) : '';

        const apiUrl = new URL('https://archive.org/wayback/available');
        apiUrl.searchParams.set('url', target);
        if (timestamp) apiUrl.searchParams.set('timestamp', timestamp);

        let resp;
        try {
            resp = await fetch(apiUrl, {
                headers: {
                    'Accept': 'application/json',
                    'User-Agent': 'opencli/1.0 (+https://github.com/jackwener/opencli)',
                },
            });

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Pass the target as a positional argument: `opencli archive wayback wikipedia.org`.
2. In scripts, guard that the URL variable is non-empty before invoking.
3. Check shell quoting/interpolation — ensure `$VAR` actually expands to the intended URL.

Example fix

// before: variable may be unset
await exec(`opencli archive wayback ${process.env.TARGET}`);
// after: validate first
if (!process.env.TARGET?.trim()) throw new Error('TARGET env var must be a URL');
await exec(`opencli archive wayback ${process.env.TARGET}`);

const target = String(process.argv[3] ?? '').trim();
if (!target) throw new Error('usage: opencli archive wayback <url>');

function isNonEmptyString(v) {
  return typeof v === 'string' && v.trim().length > 0;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Running the command with no positional argument, passing only flags, or passing a value that is empty/whitespace (e.g. `--url " "` style quoting mistakes); shell interpolation expanding a variable to nothing (`opencli archive wayback $EMPTY_VAR`).

Common situations: Scripting with unset environment variables; copying examples that show a placeholder; forgetting the positional argument because other subcommands use named flags.

Understand the failure class

Background: "missing required argument" and "the following required arguments were not provided": what required-argument errors mean and how to fix them — this error's family across 20 libraries.

Related errors

• designer is required (for example: halolab)
• shot is required (numeric id or dribbble.com/shots URL)
• query is required
• emoji required (a single unicode emoji)
• emoji required (the unicode emoji to remove)

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/546f9e94b84f8ccc. Report an issue: GitHub.