pathwaycom/pathway · error · ValueError

Invalid schema. Time columns must be int or float.

Error message

Invalid schema. Time columns must be int or float.

What it means

At runtime, _PathwayAirbyteSubject dispatches each record either to the incremental path (forward payload and manage state) or the full_refresh path (dedup cache via api.ref_scalar). Unknown sync_mode values fall through to a RuntimeError — an internal invariant guard after the catalog validation in pw.io.airbyte.read.

Source

Thrown at python/pathway/demo/__init__.py:290

        schema: Schema of the resulting table.
        time_column: Column containing the timestamps.
        unit: Unit of the timestamps. Only 's', 'ms', 'us', and 'ns' are supported. Defaults to 's'.
        autocommit_duration_ms: the maximum time between two commits. Every
          autocommit_duration_ms milliseconds, the updates received by the connector are
          committed and pushed into Pathway Live Data Framework's computation graph.
        speedup: Produce stream `speedup` times faster than it would result from the time column.

    Returns:
        Table: The table read.

    Note: the CSV files should follow a standard CSV settings. The separator is ',', the
    quotechar is '"', and there is no escape.

    """

    time_column_type = schema.typehints().get(time_column, None)
    if time_column_type != int and time_column_type != float:
        raise ValueError("Invalid schema. Time columns must be int or float.")

    if unit not in ["s", "ms", "us", "ns"]:
        raise ValueError(
            "demo.replay_csv_with_time: unit should be either 's', 'ms, 'us', or 'ns'."
        )

    unit_factor = 1
    match unit:
        case "ms":
            unit_factor = 1000
        case "us":
            unit_factor = 1_000_000
        case "ns":
            unit_factor = 1_000_000_000
        case _:
            unit_factor = 1
    speedup *= unit_factor

View on GitHub (pinned to fa2f74a464)

Solutions

1. If building the subject/source manually, ensure every catalog stream uses sync_mode "incremental" or "full_refresh".
2. Re-run through pw.io.airbyte.read so the catalog validation in python/pathway/io/airbyte/__init__.py catches bad values before runtime.
3. If it reproduces with a plain pw.io.airbyte.read call, report it as a Pathway bug with the catalog JSON.

for s in source.configured_catalog["streams"]:
    assert s["sync_mode"] in {"incremental", "full_refresh"}, s

try:
    pw.run()
except RuntimeError as e:
    if "Unknown sync_mode" in str(e):
        raise ValueError(f"misconfigured airbyte catalog: {e}") from e
    raise

When it happens

Trigger: The configured catalog passed the earlier per-stream checks in a way that left a sync_mode value other than incremental/full_refresh reaching the record-dispatch branch — e.g. a catalog mutated after construction, a monkeypatched source, or a version mismatch between validation constants and logic.

Common situations: Rare in normal use; appears when constructing _PathwayAirbyteSubject directly with a hand-built catalog, or when airbyte-related code paths are overridden in tests (dependency_overrides) with inconsistent sync_mode values.

Related errors

• demo.replay_csv_with_time: unit should be either 's', 'ms, '
• negative timestamp cannot be used
• only diffs of 1 and -1 are supported
• demo.generate_custom_stream error: nb_rows should be None or
• demo.noisy_linear_stream error: nb_rows should be strictly p

AI-assisted analysis of pathwaycom/pathway@fa2f74a464 (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8a0ec60c987775e0. Report an issue: GitHub.