theonedev/onedev · error · RuntimeException

Malformed query

Error message

Malformed query

What it means

AgentQuery parsing installs an ANTLR BaseErrorListener on the lexer; any lexical error in the query text (illegal characters, unclosed quotes) makes the listener throw RuntimeException('Malformed query', cause).

Source

Thrown at server-core/src/main/java/io/onedev/server/search/entity/agent/AgentQuery.java:82

	public AgentQuery(@Nullable Criteria<Agent> criteria) {
		this(criteria, new ArrayList<>());
	}

	public AgentQuery() {
		this(null);
	}
	
	public static AgentQuery parse(@Nullable String queryString, boolean forRunner) {
		if (queryString != null) {
			CharStream is = CharStreams.fromString(queryString); 
			AgentQueryLexer lexer = new AgentQueryLexer(is);
			lexer.removeErrorListeners();
			lexer.addErrorListener(new BaseErrorListener() {

				@Override
				public void syntaxError(Recognizer<?, ?> recognizer, Object offendingSymbol, int line,
						int charPositionInLine, String msg, RecognitionException e) {
					throw new RuntimeException("Malformed query", e);
				}
				
			});
			CommonTokenStream tokens = new CommonTokenStream(lexer);
			AgentQueryParser parser = new AgentQueryParser(tokens);
			parser.removeErrorListeners();
			parser.setErrorHandler(new BailErrorStrategy());
			QueryContext queryContext = parser.query();
			CriteriaContext criteriaContext = queryContext.criteria();
			Criteria<Agent> agentCriteria;
			if (criteriaContext != null) {
				agentCriteria = new AgentQueryBaseVisitor<Criteria<Agent>>() {

					@Override
					public Criteria<Agent> visitFuzzyCriteria(FuzzyCriteriaContext ctx) {
						return new FuzzyCriteria(getValue(ctx.getText()));
					}
					

View on GitHub (pinned to d44925c47c)

Solutions

1. Fix the query syntax: balance quotes and remove illegal characters
2. Build queries programmatically via the criteria/sort API instead of raw strings
3. Catch RuntimeException around query parsing to surface a user-friendly message

Example fix

// before
new AgentQuery("status is "running"") // unbalanced quote
// after
new AgentQuery("status is \"running\"")

if (q.chars().filter(c -> c == '"').count() % 2 != 0) throw new IllegalArgumentException("unbalanced quotes in query");

try { new AgentQuery(q, forRunner); } catch (RuntimeException e) { /* show 'malformed query' with original input */ }

When it happens

Trigger: Passing an agent query string with invalid tokens — e.g. unbalanced quotes, stray characters like ';' or '&&', or unsupported syntax — to AgentQuery for parsing.

Common situations: Building the query programmatically without escaping; hand-editing a saved query; copying a query from another entity type whose syntax differs.

Understand the failure class

Background: Schema validation failed / invalid input schema: payload rejected because its shape doesn't match the expected schema — this error's family across 28 libraries.

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

• Error parsing query
• Criteria '' is not supported here
• Unexpected operator:
• Cannot order by field:
• Attribute not found:

AI-assisted analysis of theonedev/onedev@d44925c47c (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f6b86acfa2fb8f66. Report an issue: GitHub.