phacility/phabricator · error · PhutilArgumentUsageException

Unable to parse argument to "--until".

Error message

Unable to parse argument to "--until".

What it means

A PhutilArgumentUsageException from `bin/drydock lease` when --until is given but strtotime() cannot parse it into a positive timestamp. PHP's strtotime() returns false for unparseable input, and false <= 0 is true, so both garbage strings and pre-epoch dates are rejected. The value must be anything strtotime understands, e.g. '2027-01-01' or '+2 hours'.

Source

Thrown at src/applications/drydock/management/DrydockManagementLeaseWorkflow.php:58

          ),
        ));
  }

  public function execute(PhutilArgumentParser $args) {
    $viewer = $this->getViewer();

    $resource_type = $args->getArg('type');
    if (!phutil_nonempty_string($resource_type)) {
      throw new PhutilArgumentUsageException(
        pht(
          'Specify a resource type with "--type".'));
    }

    $until = $args->getArg('until');
    if (phutil_nonempty_string($until)) {
      $until = strtotime($until);
      if ($until <= 0) {
        throw new PhutilArgumentUsageException(
          pht(
            'Unable to parse argument to "--until".'));
      }
    }

    $count = $args->getArgAsInteger('count');
    if ($count < 1) {
      throw new PhutilArgumentUsageException(
        pht(
          'Value provided to "--count" must be a nonzero, positive '.
          'number.'));
    }

    $attributes_file = $args->getArg('attributes');
    if (phutil_nonempty_string($attributes_file)) {
      if ($attributes_file == '-') {
        echo tsprintf(
          "%s\n",

View on GitHub (pinned to 5720a38cfe)

Solutions

1. Use an unambiguous strtotime-compatible format: 'YYYY-MM-DD', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS', '+2 hours', or a plain Unix timestamp string.
2. Test the value first: `php -r 'var_dump(strtotime($argv[1]));' -- "<your string>"` should print a positive integer.
3. In scripts, validate strtotime() !== false before invoking the CLI.

Example fix

# before
bin/drydock lease --type host --until '02/31/2027'

# after
bin/drydock lease --type host --until '2027-02-28 12:00:00'

$ts = strtotime($until);
if ($ts === false || $ts <= 0) {
  throw new InvalidArgumentException("Unparseable --until value: {$until}");
}
// pass date('Y-m-d H:i:s', $ts) or the raw timestamp to the CLI

When it happens

Trigger: `bin/drydock lease --type host --until 'not-a-date'` or a locale-specific format strtotime does not understand (e.g. '01/02/2027' parsed as US m/d/y when d/m/y was intended, or '2027-13-45').

Common situations: Date strings copied from other tools (ISO 8601 with timezone offsets usually works, exotic formats do not); scripts passing an empty-but-set variable after phutil_nonempty_string passes; human input like 'next thursday after lunch'.

Understand the failure class

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

• Value provided to "--count" must be a nonzero, positive numb
• Blueprint type "%s" is unrecognized. Valid types are: %s.
• Use "--lease" to specify a lease.
• Specify a command to run.
• Unable to load lease with ID "%s"!

AI-assisted analysis of phacility/phabricator@5720a38cfe (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/80941cbb75d6c1d3. Report an issue: GitHub.