projectdiscovery/katana · error

failed to find shortest path

Error message

failed to find shortest path

What it means

tryShortestPathNavigation fails when crawlGraph.ShortestPath(currentPageHash, action.OriginID) returns an error other than graphlib.ErrTargetNotReachable — i.e. an unexpected graph failure (e.g. source vertex missing, internal graph error) rather than a merely unreachable target, so the back-navigation cannot be planned.

Source

Thrown at pkg/engine/headless/crawler/state.go:310

	actions, err := c.crawlGraph.ShortestPath(currentPageHash, action.OriginID)
	if err != nil {
		if errors.Is(err, graphlib.ErrTargetNotReachable) {
			c.logger.Debug("Target not reachable, reaching from blank state",
				slog.String("action_origin_id", action.OriginID),
				slog.String("current_page_hash", currentPageHash),
			)

			actions, err = c.crawlGraph.ShortestPath(emptyPageHash, action.OriginID)
			if err != nil {
				return "", errors.Wrap(err, "could not find path to origin page")
			}
		} else {
			return "", errors.Wrap(err, "failed to find shortest path")
		}
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to e3e742739c)

Solutions

1. Inspect the wrapped error; a missing source vertex means currentPageHash was never added to the crawl graph
2. Ensure every visited page state is registered via AddPageState before back-navigation
3. Log currentPageHash and action.OriginID to diagnose vertex existence
4. Skip the back-navigation and mark the action as non-replayable for this run

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at pkg/engine/headless/crawler/state.go:310 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of projectdiscovery/katana@e3e742739c (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/832b5b17f2d0fd0c. Report an issue: GitHub.