wtfutil/wtf · error

%s

Error message

%s

What it means

GetLinks in the subreddit module performs a Reddit HTTP request and rejects any response with status code above 299, returning the raw resp.Status string (e.g. "429 Too Many Requests") as the error. Since it returns the status text, the cause is directly readable.

Source

Thrown at modules/subreddit/api.go:40

	}

	request.Header.Set("User-Agent", "wtfutil (https://github.com/wtfutil/wtf)")

	// See https://www.reddit.com/r/redditdev/comments/t8e8hc/comment/i18yga2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
	client := &http.Client{
		Transport: &http.Transport{
			TLSNextProto: map[string]func(authority string, c *tls.Conn) http.RoundTripper{},
		},
	}
	resp, err := client.Do(request)

	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	defer func() { _ = resp.Body.Close() }()

	if resp.StatusCode > 299 {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("%s", resp.Status)
	}
	var m RedditDocument
	err = utils.ParseJSON(&m, resp.Body)

	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}

	if len(m.Data.Children) == 0 {
		return nil, fmt.Errorf("no links")
	}

	var links []Link
	for _, l := range m.Data.Children {
		links = append(links, l.Data)
	}
	return links, nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to bb838c1ccb)

Solutions

1. Check the returned status string: 429 means reduce refresh interval
2. Verify the subreddit name in config exists and is public
3. Set a descriptive custom User-Agent to avoid Reddit's default-UA throttling
4. Retry later on 5xx statuses

Example fix

// before
"subreddit": "golangxxxx" // 404
// after
"subreddit": "golang"

if subreddit == "" || strings.ContainsAny(subreddit, "/?&") { return errors.New("invalid subreddit name") }

func isRateLimited(status string) bool { return strings.HasPrefix(status, "429") }

links, err := GetLinks(subreddit)
if err != nil {
    var status string
    if strings.HasPrefix(err.Error(), "429") { waitAndRetry() } else { log.Printf("reddit: %v", err) }
    _ = status
}

When it happens

Trigger: Any Reddit API response with status 300+: 403/429 from rate limiting or blocked user-agent, 404 for a nonexistent subreddit, 5xx Reddit outages.

Common situations: Reddit rate-limiting aggressive polling; subreddit renamed/private/banned; missing or generic User-Agent being throttled; Reddit returning 403 to unauthenticated API calls on restricted subreddits.

Related errors

• executing request: %w
• unexpected status %d from DEV.to API
• %s
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• yfinance: unexpected status %d for symbol %q

AI-assisted analysis of wtfutil/wtf@bb838c1ccb (2026-09-03). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e6715b3fc949d917. Report an issue: GitHub.