phacility/phabricator · error · Exception

When creating a new Almanac service via the Conduit API, you

Error message

When creating a new Almanac service via the Conduit API, you must provide a "type" transaction to select a type.

What it means

Thrown by PhabricatorRepository::assertValidRepositorySlug() when a repository short name contains multiple consecutive underscores, hyphens, or periods ('__', '--', or '..'). Runs of separators are rejected because '..' enables path-traversal interpretations and repeated separators make URIs ambiguous; Phabricator requires single separators between name words. Enforced by the preg_match('/__|--|\.\./', $slug) check in the short-name transaction path.

Source

Thrown at src/applications/almanac/editor/AlmanacServiceEditEngine.php:55

  }

  protected function newEditableObject() {
    $service_type = $this->getServiceType();
    return AlmanacService::initializeNewService($service_type);
  }

  protected function newEditableObjectFromConduit(array $raw_xactions) {
    $type = null;
    foreach ($raw_xactions as $raw_xaction) {
      if ($raw_xaction['type'] !== 'type') {
        continue;
      }

      $type = $raw_xaction['value'];
    }

    if ($type === null) {
      throw new Exception(
        pht(
          'When creating a new Almanac service via the Conduit API, you '.
          'must provide a "type" transaction to select a type.'));
    }

    $map = AlmanacServiceType::getAllServiceTypes();
    if (!isset($map[$type])) {
      throw new Exception(
        pht(
          'Service type "%s" is unrecognized. Valid types are: %s.',
          $type,
          implode(', ', array_keys($map))));
    }

    $this->setServiceType($type);

    return $this->newEditableObject();
  }

View on GitHub (pinned to 5720a38cfe)

Solutions

Collapse separator runs to a single character in generated names: preg_replace('/([._-])\1+/', '$1', $slug) or replace invalid runs with one hyphen ('/[^a-zA-Z0-9._-]+/' with '-').
Fix the source name manually ('team--utils' -> 'team-utils').
Run PhabricatorRepository::isValidRepositorySlug() on generated names before applying them.

Example fix

// before
$slug = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9._-]/', '-', 'team  utils'); // 'team--utils'

// after
$slug = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9._-]+/', '-', 'team  utils'); // 'team-utils'

Defensive patterns

Strategy: type-guard

Validate before calling

$slug = preg_replace('/([._-]){2,}/', '$1', $slug); // collapse '__', '--', '..'

Type guard

function isValidShortName($slug) {
  return PhabricatorRepository::isValidRepositorySlug((string)$slug);
}

Try / catch

try {
  PhabricatorRepository::assertValidRepositorySlug($slug);
} catch (Exception $ex) {
  // collapse separator runs and revalidate, or reject
}

Prevention

Replace invalid-character RUNS ('/[^a-zA-Z0-9._-]+/') with a single hyphen, not per-character.
Reject '..' explicitly in upstream name sources; it doubles as a path-traversal guard.

When it happens

Trigger: Setting a short name like 'team--utils' or 'repo..name': the separator-run regex at PhabricatorRepository.php:411 matches and throws with the offending name.

Common situations: Naive sanitizers that replace each invalid character individually with '-', turning 'a b' into 'a--b'; names that literally contain '..' copied from paths; merging prefix and suffix strings that both end/start with a separator.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of phacility/phabricator@5720a38cfe (2026-08-21). Data as JSON: /api/errors/9bd36b1aa6043c6f. Report an issue: GitHub.