What causes "invalid color: %w" in siyuan-note/siyuan?

Convert the color to a full 6-digit lowercase hex form (#RRGGBB) before saving the theme.

invalid color: %w

Error message

invalid color: %w

What it means

When normalizing an inline style theme (normalizeInlineStyleTheme), the Color field is passed through normalizeInlineStyleColor. If that lower-level validation fails (e.g. bad format, non-empty garbage), the error is wrapped as "invalid color: %w" and the whole theme is rejected. It is the color-specific half of theme validation; backgroundColor failures get their own wrapper.

Source

Thrown at kernel/model/inline_style.go:856

		if _, valid := builtinStyleOrder[id]; !valid {
			return nil, fmt.Errorf("invalid hidden builtin style ID [%s]", id)
		}
		if _, exists := seen[id]; exists {
			continue
		}
		seen[id] = struct{}{}
		ret = append(ret, id)
	}
	sort.Slice(ret, func(i, j int) bool {
		return builtinStyleOrder[ret[i]] < builtinStyleOrder[ret[j]]
	})
	return ret, nil
}

func normalizeInlineStyleTheme(theme *InlineStyleTheme) (ret *InlineStyleTheme, err error) {
	ret = &InlineStyleTheme{}
	if ret.Color, err = normalizeInlineStyleColor(theme.Color); err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("invalid color: %w", err)
	}
	if ret.BackgroundColor, err = normalizeInlineStyleColor(theme.BackgroundColor); err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("invalid backgroundColor: %w", err)
	}
	return ret, nil
}

func normalizeInlineStyleColor(color string) (ret string, err error) {
	ret = strings.ToLower(strings.TrimSpace(color))
	if ret == "" {
		return ret, nil
	}
	if !inlineStyleColorPattern.MatchString(ret) {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("color [%s] must use #RRGGBB format", color)
	}
	return ret, nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 8641553a1f)

Solutions

Convert the color to a full 6-digit lowercase hex form (#RRGGBB) before saving the theme.
Expand shorthand #RGB to #RRGGBB or convert named/rgb() colors with a helper before calling the API.
Read the wrapped inner error (%w) to see the exact underlying reason and fix that value.

Example fix

// before
theme.Color = "#abc" // shorthand, rejected
// after
theme.Color = "#aabbcc" // full 6-digit hex

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

function isValidThemeColor(c) {
  return c === "" || /^#[0-9a-fA-F]{6}$/.test(c);
}

Prevention

Normalize any color input (named, rgb(), #RGB) to #RRGGBB before saving.
Run the regex check on both Color and BackgroundColor before calling the API.
Prefer a color picker component that outputs 6-digit hex.

When it happens

Trigger: Saving an inline style theme whose light or dark half has a Color value that fails normalizeInlineStyleColor in kernel/model/inline_style.go — e.g. "red", "#fff", "ff0000", "#GGHHII", or a value with unsupported characters.

Common situations: Color pickers emitting rgb() or named colors instead of hex; truncated 3-digit hex codes; users typing colors into a config field; JavaScript theme generation producing uppercase or shorthand hex.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid ... format", "must be in format X", "does not look like a ..." — invalid argument format errors across CLI tools and libraries — this error's family across 17 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of siyuan-note/siyuan@8641553a1f (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0755ac7091f72bee. Report an issue: GitHub.