pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · KettleValueException

: couldn't convert string [" + string + "] to an internet…

Error message

 : couldn't convert string [" + string + "] to an internet address

What it means

convertStringToInternetAddress() parses a string via InetAddress.getByName(); any parse/resolution failure is wrapped in KettleValueException 'couldn't convert string [...] to an internet address'. Note the source string is included in the message.

Solutions

  1. Clean/trim the input and confirm it is a valid IP literal (or resolvable host) before conversion
  2. Set the field type to String instead of Internet Address for non-IP values
  3. Pre-validate with a regex/IP parse in a modified Java Script step or filter invalid rows
  4. Catch KettleValueException and use Kettle error handling to send bad rows aside

Example fix

// before
row[ipIdx] = inetMeta.convertData(strMeta, row[hostIdx]);
// after
String s = strMeta.getString(row[hostIdx]).trim();
if (!s.matches("[0-9a-fA-F:.]+")) row[ipIdx] = null;
else row[ipIdx] = inetMeta.convertData(strMeta, s);
Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

String s = stringMeta.getString(v);
if (s == null || !s.trim().matches("([0-9]{1,3}\\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}|[0-9a-fA-F:]+")) { /* invalid, skip or null */ }

Type guard

boolean looksLikeIp(String s){ return s != null && s.trim().matches("([0-9]{1,3}\\.){3}[0-9]{1,3}|[0-9a-fA-F:]+") && !s.trim().isEmpty(); }

Try / catch

try { addr = inetMeta.convertData(strMeta, s); } catch (KettleValueException e) { /* bad literal: log s and default */ }

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: getString()/getInternetAddress()/getValueFromResultSet/convertData encountering a string that is not a valid IP literal (getByName with an unresolvable hostname also throws). Whitespace or locale-specific formatting in the input also triggers this.

Common situations: CSV/log fields containing hostnames, empty strings, or malformed addresses ('999.1.1.1', '::gg::'); DNS-less environments where getByName cannot resolve host names; trailing spaces in fixed-width file columns.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5d668df360905161. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at core/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/core/row/value/ValueMetaInternetAddress.java:285

      return InetAddress.getByAddress( addr );
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new KettleValueException( "Unable to convert an Integer to an internet address", e );
    }
  }

  protected synchronized InetAddress convertStringToInternetAddress( String string ) throws KettleValueException {
    // See if trimming needs to be performed before conversion
    //
    string = Const.trimToType( string, getTrimType() );

    if ( Utils.isEmpty( string ) ) {
      return null;
    }

    try {
      return InetAddress.getByName( string );
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new KettleValueException( toString()
        + " : couldn't convert string [" + string + "] to an internet address", e );
    }
  }

  protected synchronized String convertInternetAddressToString( InetAddress inetAddress ) throws KettleValueException {

    if ( inetAddress == null ) {
      return null;
    }

    return inetAddress.getHostAddress();
  }

  @Override
  public Object convertDataFromString( String pol, ValueMetaInterface convertMeta, String nullIf, String ifNull,
    int trim_type ) throws KettleValueException {
    // null handling and conversion of value to null
    //

View on GitHub (pinned to f3058517a1)