pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error · KettleXMLException

FileExistsMeta.Exception.UnableToReadStepInfo

Error message

FileExistsMeta.Exception.UnableToReadStepInfo

What it means

FileExistsMeta.loadXML()/readData() parses the step's XML node (fields like filenamefield, resultfieldname, includefiletype) and wraps any parsing exception in a KettleXMLException with the localized 'UnableToReadStepInfo' message. It signals corrupted or unexpected step XML when loading a transformation.

Solutions

  1. Open the .ktr in a text editor and fix or remove the malformed FileExists step XML.
  2. Re-create the FileExists step in Spoon and re-save the transformation.
  3. Restore the ktr from backup or version control.
  4. Ensure the opening/closing Spoon versions are compatible with the transformation.

Example fix

<!-- before -->
<step><name>FileExists</name><type>FileExists</type><filenamefield>filename <!-- unclosed tag
<!-- after -->
<step><name>FileExists</name><type>FileExists</type><filenamefield>filename</filenamefield></step>
Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

org.w3c.dom.Document doc;
try {
  doc = javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(new java.io.File(ktrPath));
} catch (Exception e) {
  throw new IllegalStateException("Malformed ktr XML: " + ktrPath, e);
}

Try / catch

try {
  TransMeta tm = new TransMeta(ktrPath);
} catch (KettleXMLException e) {
  if (e.getMessage().contains("FileExistsMeta.Exception.UnableToReadStepInfo")) {
    // repair or re-create the FileExists step XML
  } else { throw e; }
}

Prevention

When it happens

Trigger: Loading a .ktr whose <step type="FileExists"> XML node is malformed, truncated, hand-edited, or produced by an incompatible plugin version.

Common situations: Manually edited XML; merge conflicts in versioned ktr files; repository export/import across Pentaho versions with changed tags; character-encoding corruption.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to unmarshal" / json.Unmarshal errors: why parsing a response into a Go struct fails and how to fix it — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/a6cbef5494e4622c. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at engine/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/fileexists/FileExistsMeta.java:187

    StringBuilder retval = new StringBuilder();

    retval.append( "    " + XMLHandler.addTagValue( "filenamefield", filenamefield ) );
    retval.append( "    " + XMLHandler.addTagValue( "resultfieldname", resultfieldname ) );
    retval.append( "    " ).append( XMLHandler.addTagValue( "includefiletype", includefiletype ) );
    retval.append( "    " + XMLHandler.addTagValue( "filetypefieldname", filetypefieldname ) );
    retval.append( "    " ).append( XMLHandler.addTagValue( "addresultfilenames", addresultfilenames ) );
    return retval.toString();
  }

  private void readData( Node stepnode, List<DatabaseMeta> databases ) throws KettleXMLException {
    try {
      filenamefield = XMLHandler.getTagValue( stepnode, "filenamefield" );
      resultfieldname = XMLHandler.getTagValue( stepnode, "resultfieldname" );
      includefiletype = "Y".equalsIgnoreCase( XMLHandler.getTagValue( stepnode, "includefiletype" ) );
      filetypefieldname = XMLHandler.getTagValue( stepnode, "filetypefieldname" );
      addresultfilenames = "Y".equalsIgnoreCase( XMLHandler.getTagValue( stepnode, "addresultfilenames" ) );
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new KettleXMLException(
        BaseMessages.getString( PKG, "FileExistsMeta.Exception.UnableToReadStepInfo" ), e );
    }
  }

  public void readRep( Repository rep, IMetaStore metaStore, ObjectId id_step, List<DatabaseMeta> databases ) throws KettleException {
    try {
      filenamefield = rep.getStepAttributeString( id_step, "filenamefield" );
      resultfieldname = rep.getStepAttributeString( id_step, "resultfieldname" );
      includefiletype = rep.getStepAttributeBoolean( id_step, "includefiletype" );
      filetypefieldname = rep.getStepAttributeString( id_step, "filetypefieldname" );
      addresultfilenames = rep.getStepAttributeBoolean( id_step, "addresultfilenames" );
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw new KettleException( BaseMessages.getString(
        PKG, "FileExistsMeta.Exception.UnexpectedErrorReadingStepInfo" ), e );
    }
  }

  public void saveRep( Repository rep, IMetaStore metaStore, ObjectId id_transformation, ObjectId id_step ) throws KettleException {

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