stanfordnlp/CoreNLP · error · IllegalArgumentException

Invalid timex xml

Error message

Invalid timex xml: ${xml}

What it means

Thrown by Timex.fromXml when the input XML is not parseable as a TIMEX3 element, so no Timex object can be initialized. The method expects XML containing a TIMEX3 tag with attributes like tid, type, and value.

Solutions

1. Ensure the input is well-formed XML with a TIMEX3 root element.
2. Unwrap enclosing TimeML markup and pass only the TIMEX3 element string.
3. Catch the IllegalArgumentException and fall back to Timex.fromMap with the attributes extracted separately.
4. Validate/repair XML entities (&, <) before calling.

Example fix

// before
Timex t = Timex.fromXml("<time value=2020-03-03/>");

// after
Timex t = Timex.fromXml("<TIMEX3 tid=\"t1\" type=\"DATE\" value=\"2020-03-03\"/>");

static boolean isTimex3Xml(String xml) {
  return xml != null && xml.trim().startsWith("<TIMEX3") && xml.trim().endsWith(">");
}

try {
  Timex t = Timex.fromXml(xml);
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
  if (e.getMessage() != null && e.getMessage().startsWith("Invalid timex xml:")) {
    // fall back to building from raw attributes
    Timex t = Timex.fromMap(text, attrsMap);
    return t;
  } else throw e;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling Timex.fromXml(xml) with a non-TIMEX3 root (e.g. <time>), malformed XML, or an empty/blank string; also when the XML parses but does not yield the expected element the init path requires.

Common situations: Round-tripping Timex output through systems that rename or wrap the tag; feeding plain text or TimeML fragments truncated mid-tag; XML with unescaped entities.

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

• Cannot interpret
• Cannot interpret for
• Illegal quantifier at beginning of pattern
• Invalid arguments to
• Bad process cp1252

AI-assisted analysis of stanfordnlp/CoreNLP@1b7edd19c4 (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b9cbc9a89ddc9d5b. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at src/edu/stanford/nlp/time/Timex.java:329

      element.setTextContent(text);
    }
    return element;
  }

  // Used to create timex from XML (mainly for testing)
  public static Timex fromXml(String xml) {
    Element element = XMLUtils.parseElement(xml);
    if ("TIMEX3".equals(element.getNodeName())) {
      Timex t = new Timex();
//      t.init(xml, element);

      // Doesn't preserve original input xml
      // Will reorder attributes of xml so can match xml of test timex and actual timex
      // (for which we can't control the order of the attributes now we don't use nu.xom...)
      t.init(element);
      return t;
    } else {
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid timex xml: " + xml);
    }
  }

  public static Timex fromMap(String text, Map<String, String> map) {
    try {
      Element element = XMLUtils.createElement("TIMEX3");
      for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : map.entrySet()) {
        if (entry.getValue() != null) {
          element.setAttribute(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
        }
      }
      element.setTextContent(text);
      return new Timex(element);
    } catch (Exception ex) {
      throw new RuntimeException(ex);
    }
  }

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