usebruno/bruno · error · Error

Unable to parse the postman environment json file

Error message

Unable to parse the postman environment json file

What it means

Thrown by postmanToBrunoEnvironment when importPostmanEnvironment throws for any reason. The wrapper discards the original error's message and substitutes a fixed string, so the specific cause (null input, missing .name, bad values shape) is hidden — only `console.log(err)` reveals it. The function expects a Postman environment object with at least a `name` and a `values` array.

Source

Thrown at packages/bruno-converters/src/postman/postman-env-to-bruno-env.js:41

  });
};

const importPostmanEnvironment = (environment) => {
  const brunoEnvironment = {
    name: environment.name,
    variables: []
  };

  importPostmanEnvironmentVariables(brunoEnvironment, environment.values);
  return brunoEnvironment;
};

export const postmanToBrunoEnvironment = (postmanEnvironment) => {
  try {
    return importPostmanEnvironment(postmanEnvironment);
  } catch (err) {
    console.log(err);
    throw new Error('Unable to parse the postman environment json file');
  }
};

export default postmanToBrunoEnvironment;

View on GitHub (pinned to 9bdd81c7bd)

Solutions

1. JSON.parse the file and, if it has an `environment` wrapper, unwrap it before calling.
2. Verify the object has `name` (string) and `values` (array) before passing.
3. Check stdout — `console.log(err)` on line 40 prints the real underlying error.

Example fix

// before
const env = postmanToBrunoEnvironment(rawJson); // rawJson is a string

// after
const parsed = typeof rawJson === 'string' ? JSON.parse(rawJson) : rawJson;
const envObj = parsed.environment ?? parsed;
postmanToBrunoEnvironment(envObj);

const isPostmanEnv = (e) => !!e && typeof e === 'object' && typeof e.name === 'string' && Array.isArray(e.values);

const isPostmanEnvironment = (e) => !!e && typeof e === 'object' && typeof e.name === 'string' && Array.isArray(e.values);

try {
  return postmanToBrunoEnvironment(env);
} catch (e) {
  // the real err was console.logged; rethrow with the input name for context
  throw new Error(`postman env import failed for '${env?.name ?? '<unknown>'}': ${e.message}`);
}

When it happens

Trigger: Passing null/undefined as postmanEnvironment (accessing .name throws TypeError); passing a JSON-parsed string; an environment whose `values` is not an array so lodash `each`/`.filter` throws; a values entry that is null causing i.key access to throw.

Common situations: Importing a Postman environment export that is wrapped in an envelope ({ environment: {...} }) instead of bare; importing a global/collection-level variable dump instead of an environment file; reading the file without JSON.parse first.

Understand the failure class

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

Related errors

• Failed to process ${parsedFile.fileName}: ${err.message}
• Unsupported Postman schema version. Only Postman Collection
• Invalid Postman collection format. Please check your JSON fi
• Import collection failed: ${err.message}
• Import collection failed

AI-assisted analysis of usebruno/bruno@9bdd81c7bd (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/732104b9969d4175. Report an issue: GitHub.