responsively-org/responsively-app · warning

Not a valid URL

Error message

Not a valid URL

What it means

This console.warn fires in the catch block of isValidCliArgURL when new URL(arg) itself throws a SyntaxError, meaning the CLI argument is not a parseable URL at all (not merely an unsupported protocol). The raw argument and the underlying error are logged, the cached isCliArgResult is set to false, and the function returns false so the caller treats the argument as invalid.

Source

Thrown at desktop-app/src/main/util.ts:38

export function isValidCliArgURL(arg?: string): boolean {
  if (isCliArgResult !== undefined) {
    return isCliArgResult;
  }
  if (arg == null || arg === '') {
    isCliArgResult = false;
    return false;
  }
  try {
    const url = new URL(arg);
    if (url.protocol === 'http:' || url.protocol === 'https:' || url.protocol === 'file:') {
      isCliArgResult = true;
      return true;
    }
    // eslint-disable-next-line no-console
    console.warn('Protocol not supported', url.protocol);
  } catch (e) {
    // eslint-disable-next-line no-console
    console.warn('Not a valid URL', arg, e);
  }
  isCliArgResult = false;
  return false;
}

export const getPackageJson = () => {
  let appPath;
  if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') appPath = app.getAppPath();
  else appPath = process.cwd();

  const pkgPath = path.join(appPath, 'package.json');
  if (fs.existsSync(pkgPath)) {
    const pkgContent = fs.readFileSync(pkgPath, 'utf-8');
    return JSON.parse(pkgContent);
  }
  console.error(`cant find package.json in: '${appPath}'`);
  return {};
};

View on GitHub (pinned to e5623c5a70)

Solutions

1. Prefix the argument with a scheme before passing it, e.g. https://example.com instead of example.com
2. On the code side, auto-prepend https:// when the arg looks like a bare domain before new URL()
3. Quote arguments in shell scripts so spaces and special characters survive
4. Convert Windows file paths to file:/// URLs (forward slashes) before passing

Example fix

// before
app --open example.com/page
// after
app --open https://example.com/page
// code-side normalization
if (!/^[a-z][a-z0-9+.-]*:/i.test(arg)) arg = 'https://' + arg;

function looksLikeBareDomain(s: string): boolean {
  return /^[\w-]+(\.[\w-]+)+([/?#].*)?$/.test(s);
}
const normalized = /^[a-z][a-z0-9+.-]*:/i.test(arg) ? arg : 'https://' + arg;
let ok = false;
try { new URL(normalized); ok = true; } catch { ok = false; }

function isParseableUrl(s: string): s is string {
  try { new URL(s); return true; } catch { return false; }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing a bare string like 'example.com' (no scheme), an empty string, a string with spaces/invalid characters, or malformed input like 'http://' or 'ht!tp://x' as a CLI argument.

Common situations: Users forgetting the https:// prefix, shell scripts passing unquoted values that get mangled, empty args from environment expansion, Windows paths like C:\file.txt (backslashes are invalid in URLs).

Related errors

• Invalid URL
• Protocol not supported

AI-assisted analysis of responsively-org/responsively-app@e5623c5a70 (2026-08-31). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ceb3351963711e8c. Report an issue: GitHub.