[Bug] REST catalog drop_table serializes purgeRequested as "True" instead of "true"

Open Beginner friendly
#3,836 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
python
Domain
api

Research direction

Start in pyiceberg/catalog/rest/init.py at RestCatalog.drop_table and inspect the other params= occurrences suggested in the issue. Reproduce the request or run the relevant REST catalog checks, then verify that purgeRequested is serialized as lowercase true or false and that the server accepts it.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Apache Iceberg version

None

Please describe the bug 🐞
### Description

`RestCatalog.drop_table()` passes a Python `bool` directly to `requests` query params. Python's `requests` library 
serializes `True` as the string `"True"` (capitalized). This violates the OpenAPI 3.0 specification for boolean 
query parameters and causes 400 errors on spec-compliant servers.

### Steps to Reproduce

```python
from pyiceberg.catalog import load_catalog

catalog = load_catalog("my_catalog", **{
    "type": "rest",
    "uri": "http://my-rest-catalog/iceberg",
    ...
})

catalog.drop_table("my_db.my_table", purge_requested=True)
# → 400 Bad Request

Evidence

Enabled wire-level logging via http.client.HTTPConnection.debuglevel = 1:
send: b'DELETE /iceberg/v1//namespaces/my_db/tables/my_table?purgeRequested=True HTTP/1.1\r\n...'

reply: 'HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request\r\n'
header: x-amzn-errortype: purge_enabled
body: {"error":{"type":"BadRequestException","message":"purge_enabled: DropTable operation failed. OSS Tables only 
supports dropping tables with purge enabled."}}

The server receives purgeRequested=True (capital T) and does not interpret it as boolean true.

Root Cause

pyiceberg/catalog/rest/init.py, drop_table method (~line 1135):
def drop_table(self, identifier: str | Identifier, purge_requested: bool = False) -> None:
response = self._session.delete(
self.url(Endpoints.drop_table, prefixed=True, **self._split_identifier_for_path(identifier)),
params={"purgeRequested": purge_requested}, # Python bool True → requests serializes as "True"
)
Python's requests library calls str() on param values: str(True) → "True".

Why This Is a Bug

The Iceberg REST catalog OpenAPI spec (rest-catalog-open-api.yaml
(https://github.com/apache/iceberg/blob/main/open-api/rest-catalog-open-api.yaml)) defines purgeRequested as:
- name: purgeRequested
in: query
schema:
type: boolean
Per the specification chain:

"True" (capitalized) is not a valid serialization of a JSON boolean.

Suggested Fix
params={"purgeRequested": str(purge_requested).lower()},
Or more explicitly:
params={"purgeRequested": "true" if purge_requested else "false"},
Scope

This pattern may exist elsewhere in the REST catalog client. A grep for params={ in
pyiceberg/catalog/rest/init.py would identify other occurrences where Python bools are passed as query
parameters.

Environment

  • PyIceberg: 0.11.1
  • Python: 3.10.21
  • Server: Aliyun OSS Tables (Iceberg REST compatible, strictly validates boolean query params)
  • requests: 2.x (serializes bool via str())
Willingness to contribute
  • I can contribute a fix for this bug independently
  • I would be willing to contribute a fix for this bug with guidance from the Iceberg community
  • I cannot contribute a fix for this bug at this time
Dominant language
Python
Stars
1.1k
Forks
589
Avg merge
2d 4h
Merged PRs (30d)
72

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

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.

More from apache/iceberg-python

All issues in apache/iceberg-python

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.