Who loves Golang? Our Airbrakers do! Although Golang allows you to manually find errors within an application using their built-in error interface, many developers rely on Airbrake’s error monitoring to do the work for them, saving them time and energy that can then go towards fixing those Golang errors.
Part of Airbrake’s mission is to provide a lightweight, developer-centric solution to keep your Golang application running optimally.
Here’s how it works: you install the notifier (it takes less than three minutes), and your application sends us errors and we tell you what those errors are and where they exist, right down to the exact line of code. Because of that, we have been able to store millions of metrics. Some metrics we’re excited to show: the top 10 Golang Errors! For some other metrics and software trends, check out The 2022 Airbrake Error Data Report.
Before delving into these errors, a note about how Golang error’s work (for those who may not be as familiar with Golang Error Handling). Golang is an interesting language in the sense that it includes built-in error types. By using these error types, it is possible to find abnormal areas in your code.
In the cases below, you’ll see instances of “errors. (insert variable here).” The “error” refers to the interface type, while the “error” variable typically refers to a value or function.
For more details about error handling, check out Golang Error Handling Basics.
With this in mind, here are the top 10 Golang Errors, along with example error messages:
1.*errors.errorString: MPD client: ping failed, reconnecting:
Unlike other languages, a “string” in Golang is a slice of “bytes.” When handling errors, you can use “error.String” as a trivial implementation of the error so when an abnormal state does occur using a byte, that information will be related back to you.
2. *errors.fundamental: Handle restrictions fallback to default role
*errors.fundamental is a type of error where a message and a stack exist, but the caller is missing.
3. *net.OpError: write tcp
You need to look at this error in two parts. The “OpError” refers to the error type that has been returned by functions within the package net (a portable interface network). In this particular case, you're seeing an error writing to a TCP socket.
4. String: Something went wrong calling DB
You can refer to the “errors.errorString” definition, but the error message would seem to indicate there was a failure when attempting to call a database.
5. *url.Error: Put http: URL
A url.Error is an error within the URL. Depending on the url.error type, you may see several different structures for this error. For a complete list, check out Golang’s breakdown.
6. runtime.errorString: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil point
Go users will use the package runtime operations as a way to interact with Go’s runtime system itself. In this case, the variable that was called did not have memory allocated to it. It can happen if a value is never assigned or defined for that variable.
7. *errors.withStack: unmarshal failed for body: : unexpected end of JSON
For this error, what you’re seeing is an error within a stack trace at the point withStack was called, resulting in a failure.
8. *json.SyntaxError: invalid character '<' looking for beginning of value
JSON is a common format used to communicate with web services. This error is most likely caused by go trying to parse a string of characters as JSON, that aren't actually JSON. In the example error given, HTML was most likely returned from a web communication and not JSON.
9. *catapult.RequestError: client error: 422, 422 Unprocessable Entity
Golang users who need a package to manage firecrackers VMs will oftentimes run catapult. In this case, while running catapult, a 422 Error occurred.
10. *pq.Error: pq: duplicate key value violates unique constraint
As Go states, pq is a “pure Go Postgres driver for the database/sql package.” In layman’s terms: pq allows you to interface with SQL databases. Similar to other errors, the pq error types refers to an issue connecting to the database.
So, there you have it! According to our data, these are the top 10 Golang Errors popping up in applications.
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