overleaf/overleaf · error

error getting document for downloading

Error message

error getting document for downloading

What it means

Overleaf's DocumentUpdaterController.getDoc logs this message via logger.err when calling the document-updater service to fetch a document for download fails with an unexpected (non-'not found') error. It is a catch-all handler, not a thrown error itself; the HTTP response is a bare 500. The underlying cause is whatever error propagated from DocumentUpdaterHandler.getDoc.

Source

Thrown at services/web/app/src/Features/DocumentUpdater/DocumentUpdaterController.mjs:36

    const { lines } = await DocumentUpdaterHandler.promises.getDocument(
      projectId,
      docId,
      -1 // latest version only
    )

    res.setContentDisposition('attachment', { filename: doc.name })
    plainTextResponse(res, lines.join('\n'))
  } catch (err) {
    if (err.name === 'NotFoundError') {
      logger.warn(
        { err, projectId, docId },
        'entity not found when downloading doc'
      )

      return res.sendStatus(404)
    }

    logger.err(
      { err, projectId, docId },
      'error getting document for downloading'
    )

    return res.sendStatus(500)
  }
}

export default {
  getDoc: expressify(getDoc),
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 28ad3b03b7)

Solutions

1. Check document-updater service health and logs for the correlated error
2. Verify DOCUMENT_UPDATER_URL / LISTEN_ADDRESS config in both web and document-updater
3. Check shared Redis connectivity used for document lines
4. Retry the download; investigate the propagated err in the logger.err metadata

Example fix

// before
return res.sendStatus(500)
// after
logger.err({ err, projectId, docId }, 'error getting document for downloading')
return res.status(500).json({ error: 'document download failed' })

// preflight: check document-updater reachability
const res = await fetch(`${process.env.DOCUMENT_UPDATER_URL}/health_check`)
if (!res.ok) throw new Error('document-updater unavailable')

function isRequestFailedError(err) {
  return err instanceof Error && err.constructor.name === 'RequestFailedError'
}

try {
  const doc = await documentUpdaterHandler.promises.getDoc(projectId, docId)
} catch (err) {
  if (err?.info?.notFound) return res.sendStatus(404)
  logger.err({ err, projectId, docId }, 'error getting document for downloading')
  return res.sendStatus(500)
}

When it happens

Trigger: GET /project/:projectId/doc/:docId/download where the document-updater service is unreachable, times out, or returns a non-404 error while fetching the document lines.

Common situations: document-updater container crashed or OOMed; misconfigured DOCUMENT_UPDATER_URL; Redis (doclines cache) outage; network split between web and document-updater pods.

Related errors

• Oops, something went wrong
• Server Error
• error_performing_request
• doc would become too large if appending this text
• document not found: ${docId}

AI-assisted analysis of overleaf/overleaf@28ad3b03b7 (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/01ca297568b7b301. Report an issue: GitHub.