semaphoreui/semaphore · error

name can not be empty

Error message

name can not be empty

What it means

AccessKey.Validate rejects an AccessKey whose Name field is an empty string. Every access key stored in Semaphore (SSH key, login password, Ansible password vault, Git credentials) must have a non-empty name used as its identifier in the UI and API. The check runs before saving or serializing the key's secret.

Solutions

1. Include a non-empty "name" field in the access-key request payload
2. Trim whitespace from user-supplied names before sending; treat whitespace-only as empty and reject at the client
3. If building the AccessKey struct in Go, set key.Name before calling Validate/SerializeSecret

Example fix

// before
key := AccessKey{Type: db.AccessKeyRoleGit, Secret: secret}
// after
key := AccessKey{Name: "deploy-key", Type: db.AccessKeyRoleGit, Secret: secret}
if err := key.Validate(false); err != nil {
	log.Fatal(err)
}

if strings.TrimSpace(key.Name) == "" {
	return errors.New("access key name is required")
}

func hasName(key db.AccessKey) bool {
	return strings.TrimSpace(key.Name) != ""
}

if err := key.Validate(false); err != nil {
	if strings.Contains(err.Error(), "name can not be empty") {
		return fmt.Errorf("access key rejected: %w", err)
	}
	return err
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling UpdateAccessKey with a request body lacking the "name" field, or SerializeSecret on an AccessKey object constructed with only a Secret/credentials payload and no Name.

Common situations: API clients POST/PUT /api/access-keys with only the key material but omit "name"; Terraform/Ansible automation building key JSON from variables where the name variable is unset; partial struct unmarshal after an API schema change.

Understand the failure class

Background: "must not be empty", "cannot be empty" — required-field validation errors across open-source libraries — this error's family across 41 libraries.

Related errors

• missing secret
• invalid environment secret type
• must be valid JSON
• key can not be empty
• values must be scalar

AI-assisted analysis of semaphoreui/semaphore@1774ccb71a (2026-09-07). Data as JSON: /api/errors/bf67328eae71d28f. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at db/AccessKey.go:153

type SshKey struct {
	Login      string `json:"login"`
	Passphrase string `json:"passphrase"`
	PrivateKey string `json:"private_key"`
}

type AccessKeyRole int

const (
	AccessKeyRoleAnsibleUser = iota
	AccessKeyRoleAnsibleBecomeUser
	AccessKeyRoleAnsiblePasswordVault
	AccessKeyRoleGit
)

func (key *AccessKey) Validate(validateSecretFields bool) error {
	if key.Name == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("name can not be empty")
	}

	//if !validateSecretFields {
	//	return nil
	//}

	//switch key.Type {
	//case AccessKeySSH:
	//	if key.SshKey.PrivateKey == "" {
	//		return fmt.Errorf("private key can not be empty")
	//	}
	//case AccessKeyLoginPassword:
	//	if key.LoginPassword.Password == "" {
	//		return fmt.Errorf("password can not be empty")
	//	}
	//}

	return nil

View on GitHub (pinned to 1774ccb71a)