pentaho/pentaho-kettle · error

The function call getParentFoldername throw an error :

Error message

The function call getParentFoldername throw an error : 

What it means

getParentFoldername() returns the parent folder of the file identified by its single argument via KettleVFS. If a java.io.IOException is thrown while resolving or inspecting the VFS object, the function converts it to a JavaScript runtime error: 'The function call getParentFoldername throw an error : ' plus the exception message. This indicates a filesystem/VFS-level failure rather than a scripting mistake.

Solutions

1. Validate the path is a resolvable VFS URI before calling
2. Check the remote filesystem availability and credentials
3. Normalize relative paths to fully qualified URIs
4. Update/align commons-vfs and provider libraries

Example fix

// before
var parent = getParentFoldername('sftp://host/dir with space/f.txt');
// after
var parent = getParentFoldername('sftp://host/dir%20with%20space/f.txt');

var f = isFile(path); // fail fast on unresolvable URIs

function isVfsUri(v) { return typeof v === 'string' && v.indexOf('://') > 0; }

try { var p = getParentFoldername(path); } catch (e) {
  // 'getParentFoldername throw an error : <IOException>'
  p = null; }

When it happens

Trigger: KettleVFS.getFileObject() or file operations throwing IOException — malformed or unsupported VFS URI, unreachable network filesystem, provider resolution failure, or I/O errors during resolution/close.

Common situations: SFTP/SMB mounts down or credentials expired, special characters not URL-encoded in paths, wrong URI scheme, commons-vfs provider version incompatibilities.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to read file", EACCES, ENOENT and "could not read <path>" errors: when a program can't read a file from disk — this error's family across 49 libraries.

Related errors

• Error opening new file
• The function call getFileExtension throw an error :
• The function call getLastModifiedTime throw an error :
• The function call getShortFilename throw an error :
• The function call isFolder throw an error :

AI-assisted analysis of pentaho/pentaho-kettle@f3058517a1 (2026-09-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/367d1a8d58d80f48. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at engine/src/main/java/org/pentaho/di/trans/steps/scriptvalues_mod/ScriptValuesAddedFunctions.java:2404

        if ( ArgList[0].equals( null ) ) {
          return null;
        }
        FileObject file = null;

        try {
          // Source file
          file = KettleVFS.getInstance( getBowl( actualObject ) ).getFileObject( Context.toString( ArgList[0] ) );
          String foldername = null;
          if ( file.exists() ) {
            foldername = KettleVFS.getFilename( file.getParent() );

          } else {
            Context.reportRuntimeError( "file [" + Context.toString( ArgList[0] ) + "] can not be found!" );
          }

          return foldername;
        } catch ( IOException e ) {
          throw Context.reportRuntimeError( "The function call getParentFoldername throw an error : "
            + e.toString() );
        } finally {
          if ( file != null ) {
            try {
              file.close();
            } catch ( Exception e ) {
              // Ignore errors
            }
          }
        }

      } else {
        throw Context.reportRuntimeError( "The function call getParentFoldername is not valid." );
      }
    } catch ( Exception e ) {
      throw Context.reportRuntimeError( e.toString() );
    }
  }

View on GitHub (pinned to f3058517a1)