openai / openai/openai-python

Responses API error handling reads error.message, but spec says message is top-level

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bug sdk
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Python
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Description

Confirm this is an issue with the Python library and not an underlying OpenAI API
  • This is an issue with the Python library
Describe the bug

In the Responses API event handling logic, the SDK reads the error message from error.message. However, according to the official documentation, the message field is at the top level of the error object, not nested inside another error field.

SDK code (current behavior):

if sse.event == "error" and is_mapping(data) and data.get("error"):
    message = None
    error = data.get("error")
    if is_mapping(error):
        message = error.get("message")
    if not message or not isinstance(message, str):
        message = "An error occurred during streaming"

    raise APIError(
        message=message,
        request=self.response.request,
        body=data["error"],
    )

Official API response example:

{
  "type": "error",
  "code": "ERR_SOMETHING",
  "message": "Something went wrong",
  "param": null,
  "sequence_number": 1
}

Proposed fix: Change the error handling logic to read data["message"] (the top-level field) and data["error"]["message"] (for backward compatibility) instead of only data["error"]["message"].

To Reproduce
Code snippets

OS
Python version
Library version

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Read the Responses API event handling logic in src/openai/_streaming.py around line 88, then compare it with the official streaming error response described in the issue. Done means extracting the top-level message while preserving support for the nested error.message form and retaining the existing APIError behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
api
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
57/100

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