jackwener/OpenCLI · error · EmptyResultError

devto/${id}

Error message

devto/${id}

What it means

EmptyResultError is thrown by `devto read` when the DEV.to API responds successfully but returns no article object for the requested id (fetchArticle returned null/undefined or an object lacking an `id`). The library treats an unidentifiable article as an empty result rather than a crash. It means the id was numeric/format-valid but the article does not exist or is not visible.

Source

Thrown at clis/devto/read.js:77

    description: 'Read a DEV.to article body by id',
    domain: 'dev.to',
    strategy: Strategy.PUBLIC,
    browser: false,
    args: [
        { name: 'id', required: true, positional: true, help: 'DEV.to article id (numeric, e.g. 3605688)' },
        { name: 'max-length', type: 'int', default: 20000, help: 'Max characters of body to return (min 100)' },
    ],
    columns: ['id', 'title', 'author', 'reactions', 'reading_time', 'tags', 'published_at', 'body', 'url'],
    func: async (args) => {
        const id = String(args.id || '').trim();
        if (!/^\d+$/.test(id)) {
            throw new ArgumentError(`Invalid DEV.to article id: ${args.id}`, 'Pass a numeric id like 3605688');
        }
        const maxLength = requireMinInt(args['max-length'] ?? 20000, 100, 'devto read --max-length');

        const article = await fetchArticle(id);
        if (!article || !article.id) {
            throw new EmptyResultError(`devto/${id}`, 'Article not found');
        }

        const body = requireArticleBody(article, id);
        const truncated = body.length > maxLength
            ? body.slice(0, maxLength) + '\n\n... [truncated]'
            : body;

        // The single-article endpoint returns `tag_list` as a comma-separated
        // string and `tags` as an array — the opposite of the listing endpoints.
        // Normalize either shape into a single comma-separated string.
        const tagsRaw = article.tag_list ?? article.tags ?? '';
        const tags = Array.isArray(tagsRaw) ? tagsRaw.join(', ') : String(tagsRaw);

        return [{
            id: article.id,
            title: article.title || '',
            author: article.user?.username || '[deleted]',
            reactions: article.public_reactions_count ?? 0,

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Verify the id is a real published DEV.to article (open dev.to and confirm the URL /<author>/<slug> maps to that id).
2. Re-run the command to rule out a transient API failure, and check DEV.to API availability/rate limits.
3. If you scraped the id earlier, re-fetch the article list to get the current id (deleted articles keep their id forever unreachable).
4. Call the DEV.to API directly (curl https://dev.to/api/articles/<id>) to confirm it 404s before debugging the CLI.

Example fix

// before
await cli.devto.read({ id: 3605688 });
// after
const res = await fetch(`https://dev.to/api/articles/${id}`);
if (!res.ok) { console.warn(`article ${id} unavailable (${res.status})`); return; }
await cli.devto.read({ id });

const res = await fetch(`https://dev.to/api/articles/${id}`);
if (res.ok) { const a = await res.json(); if (a?.id) { /* safe to proceed */ } }

function isArticle(a) { return !!a && typeof a === 'object' && typeof a.id === 'number'; }

try { await cli.devto.read({ id }); }
catch (e) { if (e.name === 'EmptyResultError') { console.warn(`article ${id} not found`); return null; } throw e; }

When it happens

Trigger: Running `devto read <numericId>` where the id does not correspond to any published article, the article was deleted/unpublished, or the API request failed silently and returned an empty body.

Common situations: Typo in a copied article id; article taken down by its author; DEV.to API returning an error object or empty payload (rate limiting, private/hidden content) that fetchArticle maps to null.

Understand the failure class

Background: EmptyResultError / "no results found": when an API or scraper succeeds but returns zero rows — this error's family across 9 libraries.

Related errors

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• coingecko derivatives returned HTTP ${resp.status}
• ${label} returned HTTP ${res.status}

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/675d952a4304c47d. Report an issue: GitHub.