jackwener/OpenCLI · error · ArgumentError

Article URL cannot be empty

Error message

Article URL cannot be empty

What it means

The reuters article-detail command throws ArgumentError when the positional url argument is empty or whitespace after trimming. A URL is mandatory to know which article page to load, so the command fails fast with a validation error before any navigation.

Source

Thrown at clis/reuters/article-detail.js:27

import { buildArticleDetailScript, mapArticleDetail } from './utils.js';

const REUTERS_HOST = /^https?:\/\/(?:www\.)?reuters\.com\//i;

cli({
    site: 'reuters',
    name: 'article-detail',
    access: 'read',
    description: 'Reuters 路透社文章详情：标题/作者/正文文本',
    domain: 'www.reuters.com',
    strategy: Strategy.COOKIE,
    args: [
        { name: 'url', required: true, positional: true, help: 'Reuters article URL (must be on reuters.com)' },
    ],
    columns: ['title', 'date', 'section', 'section_path', 'authors', 'description', 'word_count', 'url', 'body'],
    func: async (page, kwargs) => {
        const url = String(kwargs.url || '').trim();
        if (!url) {
            throw new ArgumentError('Article URL cannot be empty');
        }
        if (!REUTERS_HOST.test(url)) {
            throw new ArgumentError(`URL must be on reuters.com, got ${url}`);
        }
        await page.goto(url);
        await page.wait(2);
        const result = await page.evaluate(buildArticleDetailScript());
        if (result?.error) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(`Reuters article-detail failed inside the page: ${result.error}`);
        }
        if (result?.authRequired) {
            throw new AuthRequiredError('www.reuters.com', 'Reuters article-detail is gated by login, subscription, or human verification');
        }
        if (!result || result.ok !== true) {
            throw new CommandExecutionError(
                'Reuters article-detail returned no payload',
                'Check that the URL points to a Reuters article and that the page loaded',
            );

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Pass the Reuters article URL as the positional argument
2. Verify the shell variable holding the URL is actually set and non-empty
3. Quote the URL to prevent the shell from splitting or dropping it

Example fix

// before
reuters article-detail "$ARTICLE_URL"   # ARTICLE_URL unset -> ArgumentError
// after
: "${ARTICLE_URL:?must be set}"
reuters article-detail "$ARTICLE_URL"

const url = (process.argv[2] || '').trim();
if (!url) { console.error('usage: reuters article-detail <reuters.com url>'); process.exit(1); }

null

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When it happens

Trigger: Invoking the command with no positional argument, an empty string, or a value consisting only of whitespace, e.g. `reuters article-detail ""` or omitting the URL entirely.

Common situations: Shell variables that expand to empty ($URL unset); misquoted arguments swallowed by the shell; automation pipelines passing an empty field from upstream data.

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

• archive search sort must be one of ${SORT_OPTIONS.join(', ')
• archive search mediatype must be one of ${MEDIATYPES.join(',
• archive search limit must be a positive integer
• archive search limit must be <= 100
• archive search query must not be empty

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d8334bd5f5930d7f. Report an issue: GitHub.