siyuan-note/siyuan · error

parse parent document

Error message

parse parent document [%s]: %w

What it means

readDocIAL extracts the document ID and properties from a .sy JSON file, optionally in strict mode. When json.Unmarshal fails on the file's bytes, the error is wrapped as "parse parent document [%s]: %w" so the caller knows which file failed and why. The wrapping distinguishes parse failures from a merely missing parent document.

Solutions

1. Open the .sy file at the reported path and fix or inspect its JSON validity.
2. Restore the corrupted document from sync snapshots, file history, or backup.
3. Re-index or rebuild the document if the corruption is unrecoverable from backups.
4. Check disk health/space if the file was truncated mid-write.

Example fix

// no code fix — repair the data
// before: data/<box>/20260101120000-abc.sy contains truncated JSON
// after: restore a valid .sy from history/backup, then retry the operation

try { JSON.parse(require("fs").readFileSync(syPath, "utf8")); } catch (e) { /* file is corrupt; restore before proceeding */ }

ials, err := filesys.ReadDocHPath(absPath)
if err != nil {
    var pathErr *fs.PathError
    if errors.As(err, &pathErr) { /* parent missing: safe to rebuild */ }
    // otherwise parse/corruption error: restore from history or backup
}

When it happens

Trigger: Reading a parent document whose JSON is truncated, corrupted (e.g. interrupted write or failed sync), not UTF-8, or has a top-level structure that cannot unmarshal into {ID, Type, Properties}.

Common situations: Partial .sy files after a crash or disk-full during write; merge/sync conflicts producing invalid JSON; manually edited documents with JSON syntax errors; byte-level corruption on disk.

Understand the failure class

Background: "failed to unmarshal" / json.Unmarshal errors: why parsing a response into a Go struct fails and how to fix it — this error's family across 23 libraries.

Related errors

• decode existing session data failed
• invalid attribute view JSON
• invalid document JSON
• parse encrypted notebook history conf
• read attribute view custom color usage

AI-assisted analysis of siyuan-note/siyuan@9f775e8a12 (2026-09-19). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0c5554c85c6cab08. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at kernel/filesys/tree.go:361

	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	data, err = decryptDataWithDEK(boxID, filepath.ToSlash(relPath), data, dek)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	if strict {
		if err = treenode.CheckSpecJSON(data); err != nil {
			return nil, err
		}
	}
	var doc struct {
		ID         string
		Type       string
		Properties map[string]string
	}
	if err = json.Unmarshal(data, &doc); err != nil {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("parse parent document [%s]: %w", absPath, err)
	}
	if strict && (doc.ID != util.GetTreeID(absPath) || doc.Type != "NodeDocument") {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("invalid document identity [%s]", absPath)
	}
	if len(doc.Properties) == 0 {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("missing parent document properties [%s]", absPath)
	}
	for key, value := range doc.Properties {
		doc.Properties[key] = html.UnescapeAttrVal(value)
	}
	return doc.Properties, nil
}

func DocIAL(absPath string) (ret map[string]string) {
	// 加密笔记本的 .sy 是密文，流式 jsoniter 解析无法处理，需先整体读+解密。
	// 反推 boxID：路径形如 <DataDir>/<boxID>/...；非加密笔记本走原流式逻辑。
	boxID := docIALBoxID(absPath)
	if boxID != "" && DEKProvider != nil {

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