koala73/worldmonitor · error · Error

Wikidata request failed

Error message

Wikidata request failed

What it means

This is the exhausted-loop sentinel in queryWikidata: after all WIKIDATA_ATTEMPTS iterations, if no attempt returned bindings (each either failed HTTP and the last attempt rethrew, or JSON parsing failed and the last attempt swallowed/kept looping), the function throws generic Error 'Wikidata request failed'. It indicates the Wikidata lookup could not complete within the retry budget.

Source

Thrown at server/worldmonitor/intelligence/v1/get-country-facts.ts:178

    } catch (error) {
      if (attempt === WIKIDATA_ATTEMPTS - 1) throw error;
      continue;
    }
    if (!response.ok) {
      const retryable = response.status === 429 || response.status >= 500;
      if (retryable && attempt < WIKIDATA_ATTEMPTS - 1) continue;
      throw new Error(`Wikidata request failed with status ${response.status}`);
    }

    try {
      const data = (await response.json()) as WikidataResponse;
      return data.results?.bindings ?? [];
    } catch (error) {
      if (attempt === WIKIDATA_ATTEMPTS - 1) throw error;
    }
  }

  throw new Error('Wikidata request failed');
}

function parseWikidataFacts(bindings: WikidataBinding[]): WikiResult | null {
  if (bindings.length === 0) return null;

  const firstLabel = (field: keyof WikidataBinding): string => {
    for (const binding of bindings) {
      const label = cleanLabel(binding[field]?.value);
      if (label) return label;
    }
    return '';
  };
  const firstNumber = (field: 'population' | 'area'): number => {
    for (const binding of bindings) {
      const value = Number(binding[field]?.value);
      if (Number.isFinite(value) && value > 0) return value;
    }
    return 0;

View on GitHub (pinned to 9361220cc0)

Solutions

1. Inspect upstream behavior during the incident; check https://www.wikidata.org status and whether responses are HTML error pages rather than JSON
2. Increase WIKIDATA_ATTEMPTS and add backoff so transient outages fit within the retry budget
3. Log the underlying parse/HTTP error per attempt so this generic error can be diagnosed
4. Serve stale cached country facts (or a secondary source) when this error is caught

Example fix

} catch (error) {
  if (attempt === WIKIDATA_ATTEMPTS - 1) throw error;
}
// after: record why each attempt failed
} catch (error) {
  lastError = error;
  if (attempt === WIKIDATA_ATTEMPTS - 1) throw new Error(`Wikidata request failed: ${String(error)}`);
}

// Precheck connectivity/body shape before consuming attempts
const probe = await fetch(WIKIDATA_ENDPOINT, { method: 'HEAD' });
if (!probe.ok) useCachedFacts();

function isWikidataExhausted(e: unknown): boolean {
  return e instanceof Error && e.message === 'Wikidata request failed';
}

try {
  facts = await getCountryFacts(cc);
} catch (e) {
  if (isWikidataExhausted(e)) return cachedOrEmptyFacts(cc);
  throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Every attempt fails: the last attempt's non-ok status rethrows the status error, or the final attempt's response.json() throws (invalid/truncated body) and control falls out of the loop, reaching this throw.

Common situations: Wikidata returning HTML error pages or empty bodies during an outage so JSON parsing fails on every attempt; sustained rate limiting across the whole retry window; network issues truncating responses; retry count too low for a flaky endpoint.

Related errors

• Wikidata request failed with status ${response.status}
• ${label} HTTP ${response.status}
• relay returned ${resp.status}
• relay returned ${resp.status}

AI-assisted analysis of koala73/worldmonitor@9361220cc0 (2026-09-01). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ca5f5bfd0e7838ae. Report an issue: GitHub.