usememos/memos · error

text match expects exactly one argument

Error message

text match expects exactly one argument

What it means

The CEL filter parser rejects a text-matching call (contains/endsWith/startsWith-style text match) whose argument count is not exactly one. internal/filter/parser.go builds a TextMatchCondition only for calls of the form field.textMatch(literal), and arity other than 1 has no valid SQL translation. This is a compile-time validation of the user-supplied filter string, not a runtime data error.

Source

Thrown at internal/filter/parser.go:328

func buildTextMatchCondition(call *exprv1.Expr_Call, schema Schema, mode TextMatchMode) (Condition, error) {
	if call.Target == nil {
		return nil, errors.New("text match requires a target")
	}
	targetName, err := getIdentName(call.Target)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

	field, ok := schema.Field(targetName)
	if !ok {
		return nil, errors.Errorf("unknown identifier %q", targetName)
	}
	if !field.SupportsContains {
		return nil, errors.Errorf("identifier %q does not support text matching", targetName)
	}
	if len(call.Args) != 1 {
		return nil, errors.New("text match expects exactly one argument")
	}
	value, err := getConstValue(call.Args[0])
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.Wrap(err, "text match only supports literal arguments")
	}
	str, ok := value.(string)
	if !ok {
		return nil, errors.New("text match argument must be a string")
	}
	return &TextMatchCondition{
		Field: targetName,
		Mode:  mode,
		Value: str,
	}, nil
}

func buildMatchesCondition(call *exprv1.Expr_Call, schema Schema) (Condition, error) {
	if call.Target == nil {

View on GitHub (pinned to 14d757ce1f)

Solutions

1. Provide exactly one quoted string argument: content.contains("meeting")
2. Remove any extra arguments; options like case sensitivity are not supported as extra args
3. Validate the filter string with a CEL parse step before sending it to the API

Example fix

// before
content.contains()

// after
content.contains("meeting")

// Go: assert the contains/text-match call shape before submitting
import (
  "fmt"
  "strings"
)
func checkTextMatch(field, filter string) error {
  if !strings.Contains(filter, field+".contains(") {
    return nil
  }
  // crude arity check: content between the matching parens must be exactly one quoted literal
  i := strings.Index(filter, field+".contains(") + len(field) + len(".contains(")
  rest := filter[i:]
  end := strings.Index(rest, ")")
  arg := strings.TrimSpace(rest[:end])
  if arg == "" {
    return fmt.Errorf("contains() needs exactly one argument")
  }
  return nil
}

err := filterExpr.Validate(parsedAst) // compile the filter first; surface parse errors to the user input form instead of failing the request later

When it happens

Trigger: A filter expression like content.contains() (zero args) or content.contains("a", "b") (two args) sent to the memo list/filter API that accepts CEL filters. The parser reaches buildTextMatchCondition with len(call.Args) != 1 and returns the error before any SQL is generated.

Common situations: Hand-building filter strings in a script or client SDK and forgetting the argument, passing extra locale/option arguments copied from another API (e.g. JS String.prototype.includes habits), or a malformed concatenation that produces an empty argument.

Related errors

• filter must evaluate to a boolean value
• invalid use of in operator
• filter expression is empty
• unsupported top-level expression
• logical AND expects two arguments

AI-assisted analysis of usememos/memos@14d757ce1f (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/59a44221b06569d1. Report an issue: GitHub.