RangeError: Illegal offset: 0 <= 32736 (+4) <= 32739 in ProtoBuf read

[Egrodo]

Hi there, I'm working on a school project using your MTA library.

So I'm fully using your library (with some personal augments for ease of use) and it's working fantastic, I really appreciate your effort.

That being said, it would seem I'm running into a problem. Randomly I'll have a perfectly valid request to mta.schedule() throw the following error:

RangeError: Illegal offset: 0 <= 32736 (+4) <= 32739 at ByteBuffer.module.exports.ByteBufferPrototype.readUTF8String (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\bytebuffer\dist\bytebuffer-node.js:2117:27) at ByteBuffer.module.exports.ByteBufferPrototype.readVString (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\bytebuffer\dist\bytebuffer-node.js:2209:24) at Element.ProtoBuf.Reflect.ElementPrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:2185:35) at Field.ProtoBuf.Reflect.FieldPrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:3752:33) at Message.ProtoBuf.Reflect.MessagePrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:3263:45) at Element.ProtoBuf.Reflect.ElementPrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:2201:46) at Field.ProtoBuf.Reflect.FieldPrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:3752:33) at Message.ProtoBuf.Reflect.MessagePrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:3258:48) at Element.ProtoBuf.Reflect.ElementPrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:2201:46) at Field.ProtoBuf.Reflect.FieldPrototype.decode (C:\Users\egrodo\Documents\code\choochooserver\node_modules\mta-gtfs\node_modules\protobufjs\dist\protobuf.js:3752:33)

There seems to be no pattern to this either. I could be sending the exact same request every 60 seconds for an hour and it won't happen, but then it'll go and happen 3 times in a row. It's not necessarily a fatal` issue, I have my front end retrying on failed requests, but it's definitely annoying and could cause a lot of problems when I make the project available publicly.

The randomness of this error leads me to think that it's an issue with the MTA API itself rather than your implementation of it, but I'd really appreciate it if you could take a look at see if there might be a better way to handle the error and attempt retries within the library instead? I'm still learning Javascript so I don't know enough to fork the library yet but maybe I'll do that some day.

Thank you for your time

[Egrodo]

I'm seeing that the answer to a lot of these issues is to upgrade protobuf to latest. Could be a potential fix? protobufjs/protobuf.js#476

[aamaliaa]

Hi @Egrodo, I have noticed this error from time to time, as well. A protobuf upgrade is likely needed to fix it. Unfortunately because the upgraded version has breaking changes, it's a larger project that I personally haven't had the time to take on yet. I'd definitely welcome a PR, however! 😃