openai/openai-python · error · ValueError

Expected a non-empty value for `item_id` but received {item_

Error message

Expected a non-empty value for `item_id` but received {item_id!r}

What it means

In the synchronous Conversation items retrieve(), item_id is the second required path segment of /conversations/{conversation_id}/items/{item_id}. This ValueError is raised when conversation_id passed its check but item_id is falsy. It is purely client-side validation performed before the GET request.

Source

Thrown at src/openai/resources/conversations/items.py:129

        Get a single item from a conversation with the given IDs.

        Args:
          include: Additional fields to include in the response. See the `include` parameter for
              [listing Conversation items above](https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/conversations/list-items#conversations_list_items-include)
              for more information.

          extra_headers: Send extra headers

          extra_query: Add additional query parameters to the request

          extra_body: Add additional JSON properties to the request

          timeout: Override the client-level default timeout for this request, in seconds
        """
        if not conversation_id:
            raise ValueError(f"Expected a non-empty value for `conversation_id` but received {conversation_id!r}")
        if not item_id:
            raise ValueError(f"Expected a non-empty value for `item_id` but received {item_id!r}")
        return cast(
            ConversationItem,
            self._get(
                path_template(
                    "/conversations/{conversation_id}/items/{item_id}", conversation_id=conversation_id, item_id=item_id
                ),
                options=make_request_options(
                    extra_headers=extra_headers,
                    extra_query=extra_query,
                    extra_body=extra_body,
                    timeout=timeout,
                    query=maybe_transform({"include": include}, item_retrieve_params.ItemRetrieveParams),
                    security={"bearer_auth": True},
                ),
                cast_to=cast(Any, ConversationItem),  # Union types cannot be passed in as arguments in the type system
            ),
        )

View on GitHub (pinned to 9917c6e28e)

Solutions

  1. Use the id field from items.list() or create() responses directly
  2. Guard against missing keys with explicit checks when extracting ids from payloads
  3. Skip or log empty item ids in loops

Example fix

# before
iid = payload.get("item_id")  # may be None
client.conversations.items.retrieve(conversation_id=conv, item_id=iid)

# after
iid = payload["item_id"]
if not iid:
    raise ValueError(f"payload missing item_id: {payload}")
client.conversations.items.retrieve(conversation_id=conv, item_id=iid)
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

iid = payload.get("item_id")
if not iid:
    raise KeyError("payload missing item_id")

Type guard

def is_valid_item_id(v: object) -> bool:
    return isinstance(v, str) and v.startswith("item_") and len(v) > len("item_")

Try / catch

try:
    client.conversations.items.retrieve(conversation_id=cid, item_id=iid)
except ValueError as e:
    if "item_id" in str(e):
        logger.error("item id missing from upstream data: %r", iid)

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Calling client.conversations.items.retrieve(conversation_id='conv_abc', item_id='') or with item_id=None (e.g. iterating item ids where one entry is empty).

Common situations: Parsing item ids from webhook payloads or list results where a field is absent, using .get('id') on a dict without the key, or off-by-one slicing that yields None.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of openai/openai-python@9917c6e28e (2026-08-28). Data as JSON: /api/errors/881e5045636284a8. Report an issue: GitHub.