modelcontextprotocol / modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk
stdio_client crashes on malformed UTF-8 from child stdout instead of surfacing parse error
Nessuno ha ancora preso questa issue.
- Lingua principale
- Python
- Stelle
- 24.3k
- Fork
- 4k
- Merge medio
- 1g 1h
- PR unite (30g)
- 31
Descrizione
Summary
mcp.client.stdio.stdio_client() crashes when the spawned child process writes invalid UTF-8 bytes to stdout.
The transport currently decodes child stdout with encoding_error_handler="strict", so malformed bytes raise during TextReceiveStream(...) iteration. That exception escapes the decoding loop and brings down the transport task group instead of surfacing the bad line as an in-stream parse error.
Why this looks like a bug
The SDK already hardened the server side for the analogous case in PR #2302 (fix: handle non-UTF-8 bytes in stdio server stdin). That change explicitly preferred:
- replace invalid bytes with U+FFFD,
- let JSON validation fail on the malformed line, and
- keep the transport alive so subsequent valid messages can still be processed.
The client side still behaves asymmetrically today. A buggy or non-compliant child server can kill the Python client transport with a single malformed line even if the next line is valid JSON-RPC.
That seems inconsistent with the current stdio robustness direction.
Reproduction
A minimal child process that writes one malformed line and then one valid JSON-RPC line:
import sys
import time
sys.stdout.buffer.write(b"\xff\xfe\n")
sys.stdout.buffer.write(b'{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"ping"}\n')
sys.stdout.buffer.flush()
time.sleep(0.2)
With current stdio_client(...) defaults, the transport raises ExceptionGroup instead of continuing.
Expected behavior
The malformed line should be surfaced as an in-stream parse / validation error, and the next valid JSON-RPC line should still be received.
Observed behavior
The transport task group fails before the valid follow-up message is delivered.
Proposed fix
Match the server-side approach from PR #2302:
- default
StdioServerParameters.encoding_error_handlerto"replace" - continue treating malformed decoded lines as JSON validation failures
- keep the background stdio tasks resilient during early subprocess shutdown / abrupt close
Validation
I reproduced this locally against current main and verified that a minimal patch plus a regression test fixes it.
A focused regression test in tests/client/test_stdio.py can assert:
- first item from the read stream is an
Exception - second item is the valid
SessionMessage
Guida per i contributori
Apri la guida per i contributori
Come iniziare
- Leggi tutta la issue e poi la guida ai contributi del progetto.
- Commenta sulla issue per dire che te ne occupi tu — evita che due persone facciano lo stesso lavoro.
- Fai un fork del repository e lavora su un branch.
- Apri una pull request che faccia riferimento al numero della issue.
Direzione di ricerca
Inizia in mcp.client.stdio.stdio_client() e tests/client/test_stdio.py; esamina come la decodifica di TextReceiveStream e l’iterazione dello stream di lettura gestiscono gli errori di codifica. Aggiungi la regressione malformato-poi-valido descritta nell’issue, quindi esegui il test mirato per verificare che il primo elemento sia una Exception, il secondo una SessionMessage valida e che il trasporto rimanga attivo.
Scritto dal modello di indicizzazione a partire dal testo della issue.
Valutazione
- Stack tecnologico
- python
- Ambito
- backend, testing
- Tipo di issue
- Bug
- Difficoltà
- 3/5
- Tempo stimato
- 1-2 giorni
- Stato di attività
- Tranquilla
- Chiarezza
- Specificata chiaramente
- Idoneità per principianti
- 78/100