Merge pull request #25778 from leboncoin/fix-25622

fix(catalog-backend): error if metadata.annotations isn't a valid object

.changeset/cuddly-penguins-glow.md

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+---
+'@backstage/plugin-catalog-backend': patch
+---
+
+`ProcessorOutputCollector` returns an error when receiving deferred entities that have an invalid `metadata.annotations` format.
+
+This allows to return an error on an actual validation issue instead of reporting that the location annotations are missing afterwards, which is misleading for the users.

plugins/catalog-backend/src/processing/ProcessorOutputCollector.ts

@@ -115,24 +115,27 @@ export class ProcessorOutputCollector {
 
       // Note that at this point, we have only validated the envelope part of
       // the entity data. Annotations are not part of that, so we have to be
-      // defensive. If the annotations were malformed (e.g. were not a valid
-      // object), we just skip over this step and let the full entity
-      // validation at the next step of processing catch that.
+      // defensive and report an error if the annotations isn't a valid object, to avoid
+      // hiding errors when adding location annotations.
       const annotations = entity.metadata.annotations || {};
-      if (typeof annotations === 'object' && !Array.isArray(annotations)) {
-        const originLocation = getEntityOriginLocationRef(this.parentEntity);
-        entity = {
-          ...entity,
-          metadata: {
-            ...entity.metadata,
-            annotations: {
-              ...annotations,
-              [ANNOTATION_ORIGIN_LOCATION]: originLocation,
-              [ANNOTATION_LOCATION]: location,
-            },
-          },
-        };
+      if (typeof annotations !== 'object' || Array.isArray(annotations)) {
+        this.errors.push(
+          new Error('metadata.annotations must be a valid object'),
+        );
+        return;
       }
+      const originLocation = getEntityOriginLocationRef(this.parentEntity);
+      entity = {
+        ...entity,
+        metadata: {
+          ...entity.metadata,
+          annotations: {
+            ...annotations,
+            [ANNOTATION_ORIGIN_LOCATION]: originLocation,
+            [ANNOTATION_LOCATION]: location,
+          },
+        },
+      };
 
       this.deferredEntities.push({ entity, locationKey: location });
     } else if (i.type === 'location') {