Database / ChromaDB Interview Questions
What are common ChromaDB errors and how do you handle them in production code?
ChromaDB raises specific exception types that should be caught and handled gracefully in production applications. Understanding the error hierarchy helps you write resilient ingestion pipelines and retrieval code.
import chromadb from chromadb.errors import ( InvalidCollectionException, IDAlreadyExistsError, InvalidDimensionException, ) client = chromadb.PersistentClient(path="./error_demo") # --- Error 1: Collection not found --- try: col = client.get_collection("does_not_exist") except InvalidCollectionException as e: print(f"Collection missing: {e}") col = client.create_collection("does_not_exist") # create it # --- Error 2: Duplicate ID --- col.add(documents=["Original doc"], ids=["doc-1"]) try: col.add(documents=["Duplicate doc"], ids=["doc-1"]) except IDAlreadyExistsError: print("ID already exists â use upsert() instead") col.upsert(documents=["Updated doc"], ids=["doc-1"]) # safe # --- Error 3: Dimension mismatch --- # Occurs when pre-computed embeddings don't match collection's embedding dimensions col2 = client.create_collection("fixed_dim") col2.add(embeddings=[[0.1, 0.2, 0.3]], documents=["Doc"], ids=["x"]) try: col2.add(embeddings=[[0.1, 0.2]], documents=["Wrong dim"], ids=["y"]) # 2-dim except InvalidDimensionException as e: print(f"Dimension mismatch: {e}") # --- Error 4: Connection error (HttpClient) --- try: remote = chromadb.HttpClient(host="bad-host", port=9999) remote.heartbeat() except Exception as e: print(f"Server unreachable: {e}") # --- Production pattern: retry wrapper --- import time from functools import wraps def with_retry(max_attempts=3, delay=1.0): def decorator(fn): @wraps(fn) def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): for attempt in range(max_attempts): try: return fn(*args, **kwargs) except Exception as e: if attempt == max_attempts - 1: raise print(f"Attempt {attempt+1} failed: {e}. Retrying...") time.sleep(delay * (attempt + 1)) return wrapper return decorator @with_retry(max_attempts=3) def safe_add(collection, documents, ids): collection.upsert(documents=documents, ids=ids)
| Exception | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| InvalidCollectionException | get_collection() on non-existent name | Use get_or_create_collection() |
| IDAlreadyExistsError | add() with duplicate IDs | Use upsert() for idempotent writes |
| InvalidDimensionException | Pre-computed embeddings wrong size | Match dimensions to collection's model |
| ValueError | Empty IDs, bad metadata types | Validate inputs before calling ChromaDB |
| ConnectionError / requests exception | HttpClient cannot reach server | Check server health, retry with backoff |
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