jackwener/OpenCLI · error · CliError

FETCH_ERROR

FETCH_ERROR

Error message

Wikipedia API HTTP ${resp.status}

What it means

CliError with code FETCH_ERROR thrown by wikiFetch in clis/wikipedia/utils.js when the HTTP response from <lang>.wikipedia.org has a non-2xx status. Every wikipedia subcommand routes its requests through wikiFetch, so this surfaces for any endpoint-level HTTP failure (404, 403, 5xx).

Source

Thrown at clis/wikipedia/utils.js:19

/**
 * Wikipedia adapter utilities.
 *
 * Uses the public MediaWiki REST API and Action API — no key required.
 * REST API: https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/
 * Action API: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php
 */
import { CliError } from '@jackwener/opencli/errors';
/** Maximum character length for article extract fields. */
export const EXTRACT_MAX_LEN = 300;
/** Maximum character length for short description fields. */
export const DESC_MAX_LEN = 80;
export async function wikiFetch(lang, path) {
    const url = `https://${lang}.wikipedia.org${path}`;
    const resp = await fetch(url, {
        headers: { 'User-Agent': 'opencli/1.0 (https://github.com/jackwener/opencli)' },
    });
    if (!resp.ok) {
        throw new CliError('FETCH_ERROR', `Wikipedia API HTTP ${resp.status}`, `Check your title or search term`);
    }
    return resp.json();
}
/** Map a WikiSummary API response to the standard output row. */
export function formatSummaryRow(data, lang) {
    return {
        title: data.title,
        description: data.description ?? '-',
        extract: (data.extract ?? '').slice(0, EXTRACT_MAX_LEN),
        url: data.content_urls?.desktop?.page ?? `https://${lang}.wikipedia.org`,
    };
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 49907e53dc)

Solutions

1. Check resp.status in the message: 403 usually means UA/rate-limit blocking — retry later or from another network; 404 means bad lang/title path; 5xx means upstream outage
2. Verify the language code is a real Wikipedia edition
3. Test connectivity: curl -I https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/summary/Earth
4. Check https://wikimediastatus.org for incidents and retry with backoff

Example fix

// before
opencli wikipedia summary Earth --lang zz
// after
opencli wikipedia summary Earth --lang en

if (!/^[a-z-]{2,8}$/.test(lang)) throw new Error(`invalid Wikipedia lang code: ${lang}`);

try {
  const rows = await run('wikipedia summary', [title, '--lang', lang]);
} catch (e) {
  const m = /Wikipedia API HTTP (\d+)/.exec(e.message);
  if (m) {
    const status = Number(m[1]);
    if (status >= 500 || status === 429) {
      await sleep(2000);
      return run('wikipedia summary', [title, '--lang', lang]);
    }
    console.error(`Wikipedia returned ${status}; check lang/title`);
  } else throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Any wikipedia subcommand hitting: invalid --lang producing DNS/404 failures, Wikipedia rate-limiting or blocking the default opencli/1.0 User-Agent (403), REST 404 for a bad title path, or upstream 5xx outages.

Common situations: Unsupported language codes, corporate proxies/firewalls blocking wikipedia.org, Wikimedia rate limits from shared IPs, transient Wikimedia outages.

Understand the failure class

Background: "API error: {status}" and "HTTP 401/403/404/429/5xx" errors: non-2xx HTTP responses explained — this error's family across 27 libraries.

Related errors

• 12306 queryByTrainNo returned HTTP ${resp.status}
• 12306 queryByTrainNo returned non-JSON body
• 12306 ${endpoint} returned non-JSON body
• 1point3acres request failed: HTTP ${res.status} ${res.status
• ${label} returned HTTP ${resp.status}: ${summarizeApiError(p

AI-assisted analysis of jackwener/OpenCLI@49907e53dc (2026-08-29). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e483aeed66f5c252. Report an issue: GitHub.