quickwit-oss/quickwit · error

URI `{uri}` is not a valid file URI

Error message

URI `{uri}` is not a valid file URI

What it means

load_file splits the URI into a parent directory (to resolve a storage) and a file name (to fetch). If uri.parent() returns None — the URI has no separable parent, e.g. a bare scheme-less or root-less URI — the function cannot determine which storage to use and fails with this anyhow error.

Source

Thrown at quickwit/quickwit-storage/src/lib.rs:109

#[cfg(feature = "integration-testsuite")]
pub use self::test_suite::{
    storage_test_multi_part_upload, storage_test_single_part_upload, storage_test_suite,
    test_write_and_bulk_delete,
};
pub use self::timeout_and_retry_storage::TimeoutAndRetryStorage;
pub use crate::error::{
    BulkDeleteError, DeleteFailure, StorageError, StorageErrorKind, StorageResolverError,
    StorageResult,
};

/// Loads an entire local or remote file into memory.
pub async fn load_file(
    storage_resolver: &StorageResolver,
    uri: &Uri,
) -> anyhow::Result<OwnedBytes> {
    let parent = uri
        .parent()
        .ok_or_else(|| anyhow::anyhow!("URI `{uri}` is not a valid file URI"))?;
    let storage = storage_resolver.resolve(&parent).await?;
    let file_name = uri
        .file_name()
        .ok_or_else(|| anyhow::anyhow!("URI `{uri}` is not a valid file URI"))?;
    let bytes = storage.get_all(file_name).await?;
    Ok(bytes)
}

// this function isn't meant to be called, just to break compilation if
// serde_json::Map is an ordered map and not a btree map
#[allow(dead_code)]
#[cfg(not(any(test, feature = "testsuite", feature = "integration-testsuite")))]
unsafe fn serde_json_preserve_order_canary(
    val: serde_json::Map<String, serde_json::Value>,
) -> std::collections::BTreeMap<String, serde_json::Value> {
    use std::mem::transmute as assert_serde_json__preserve_order__disabled;
    unsafe { assert_serde_json__preserve_order__disabled(val) }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to a39730c5cd)

Solutions

1. Pass a fully-qualified URI including at least a parent directory, e.g. file:///etc/quickwit/config.yaml or s3://bucket/path/config.yaml.
2. If using a local path, prefix it with file:// or use an absolute path so parent() resolves.
3. Echo the URI variable before invoking the CLI to catch empty or truncated values from shell expansion.
4. Validate the URI with Uri::parse or similar before calling load_file programmatically.

Example fix

// before
let config = load_file(&resolver, &"quickwit.yaml".into()).await?;
// after
let uri = Uri::parse("file:///etc/quickwit/quickwit.yaml")?;
let config = load_file(&resolver, &uri).await?;

if uri.as_str().is_empty() || !uri.as_str().contains('/') {
    anyhow::bail!("URI `{}` must include a parent directory, e.g. file:///path/config.yaml", uri);
}

fn has_parent(uri: &Uri) -> bool {
    uri.parent().is_some()
}

let config = load_file(&resolver, &uri).await.map_err(|e| {
    anyhow::anyhow!("failed to load config from `{uri}`: {e} (use a full URI like file:///etc/quickwit/quickwit.yaml)")
})?;

When it happens

Trigger: Calling load_file with a URI whose parent() is None, such as "file.txt" (no scheme/separator), an empty URI, or "s3://" with no path component. Reached from create_index_cli, update_index_cli, load_node_config, create_source_cli, and update_source_cli when a --config or index-config URI is malformed.

Common situations: Passing a bare relative file name on the CLI instead of a full URI like file:///path/to/config.yaml or /abs/path/config.yaml; forgetting the scheme or path when pointing at an S3-hosted config; shell variable expansion leaving the URI empty.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid URL" errors: why new URL(), URI.parse, and reqwest::Url reject your string — missing scheme, whitespace, and bad path format — this error's family across 39 libraries.

Related errors

• unknown URI protocol `{protocol}`
• `append_records` should be called with `position_opt: None`
• failed to run mrecordlog operation
• stdin cannot be checkpointed
• Unexpected span kind: {}

AI-assisted analysis of quickwit-oss/quickwit@a39730c5cd (2026-09-08). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4b1c71d571397c11. Report an issue: GitHub.