Understanding Import Errors

If things go wrong with an import, we try our best to return helpful information about any errors so you can fix the problem and get your data imported. Below we explore how errors are emitted and the shape of the error message.

How errors are emitted

If there are errors during an import the system will create an errors_yourImportBatchNumber.json file in the errors directory of your S3 bucket. All errors for that batch will be in that file. Note that in some cases if there are high number of errors proportionate to the number of records, processing that batch might be aborted.

Error Messages

An example of an error message looks like the below:

  • Name
    fileNumber
    Type
    type: number
    Required
    required
    Description

    Which file of this batch the error occurred in

  • Name
    recordNumber
    Type
    type: number
    Required
    required
    Description

    The number of the record where the error occurred

  • Name
    errorType
    Type
    type: string
    Required
    required
    Description

    Some example error types would be validation or duplicate. This gives context to the rest of the messages

  • Name
    errorCode
    Type
    type: string
    Required
    required
    Description

    The short normalized code for the error that allows for easy searching

  • Name
    errorDescription
    Type
    type: string
    Required
    required
    Description

    A long text, human-readable version of the error

  • Name
    extraData
    Type
    type: string
    Required
    Description

    Any extra data that may be give extra insight into the data, such as Variant ID, etc

  • Name
    action
    Type
    type: string
    Required
    required
    Description

    What action was taken by the system. The current actions the system will take is skipped, ignored or aborted

Example Error Message

{
    "fileNumber": 23,
    "recordNumber": 12555,
    "errorType": "validation",
    "errorCode": "data-type",
    "errorDescription": "Value 'externalSystemId` must be a string",
    "action": "skipped"
}