netbirdio/netbird · error

zone name is required

Error message

zone name is required

What it means

zones.Zone.Validate() returns this when Name is empty. A Zone is hydrated from api.ZoneRequest via FromAPIRequest, so a zone create/update without a name hits it. It is the first of four checks (name present, name length, domain format, distribution groups).

Source

Thrown at management/internals/modules/zones/zone.go:70

	}
}

func (z *Zone) FromAPIRequest(req *api.ZoneRequest) {
	z.Name = req.Name
	z.Domain = req.Domain
	z.EnableSearchDomain = req.EnableSearchDomain
	z.DistributionGroups = req.DistributionGroups

	enabled := true
	if req.Enabled != nil {
		enabled = *req.Enabled
	}
	z.Enabled = enabled
}

func (z *Zone) Validate() error {
	if z.Name == "" {
		return errors.New("zone name is required")
	}
	if len(z.Name) > 255 {
		return errors.New("zone name exceeds maximum length of 255 characters")
	}

	if !domain.IsValidDomainNoWildcard(z.Domain) {
		return errors.New("invalid zone domain format")
	}

	if len(z.DistributionGroups) == 0 {
		return errors.New("at least one distribution group is required")
	}

	return nil
}

func (z *Zone) EventMeta() map[string]any {
	return map[string]any{"name": z.Name, "domain": z.Domain}

View on GitHub (pinned to 93e97f4bf1)

Solutions

1. Supply a non-empty zone name in the request body.
2. If calling NewZone programmatically, pass a non-empty name string.
3. Verify the client's field mapping against api.ZoneRequest so "name" is populated.

Example fix

// before
{"name": "", "domain": "corp.example.com", "distribution_groups": ["grp-1"]}
// after
{"name": "Corporate", "domain": "corp.example.com", "distribution_groups": ["grp-1"]}

if strings.TrimSpace(req.Name) == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("zone name is required")
}

func hasZoneName(req *api.ZoneRequest) bool {
    return strings.TrimSpace(req.Name) != ""
}

if err := zone.Validate(); err != nil {
    return respondBadRequest(err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: POST/PUT of a zone with {"name":""} or with the name key missing; building a Zone literal or calling NewZone with an empty name argument.

Common situations: Zone-creation form submitted early; a client sending the display name under a different key than the schema's "name"; automation that generates zones from templates where the name variable was unset.

Related errors

• record name is required
• record type is required
• invalid record name format
• invalid CNAME target format
• invalid record type, must be A, AAAA, or CNAME

AI-assisted analysis of netbirdio/netbird@93e97f4bf1 (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/2afb3557382ae1e6. Report an issue: GitHub.