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EMPTY_CODEBOOK — No codebook on this question

Summary

Section titled “Summary”

You’re trying to use a question’s codebook in an operation that requires one (cloning, coding with an explicit codebook reference, exporting the codebook), but the question doesn’t have a codebook yet.

HTTP status

Section titled “HTTP status”

422 Unprocessable Entity. Standard envelope.

Example response

Section titled “Example response”
{
  "success": false,
  "error": {
    "code": "EMPTY_CODEBOOK",
    "message": "Source question q_01HXJZK... has no codebook to clone from.",
    "request_id": "req_01HXJZK4ABCDEF",
    "doc_url": "https://docs.surveycoder.io/errors/empty-codebook"
  }
}

Why this happens

Section titled “Why this happens”
  • Cloning a codebook from a fresh question.
  • Calling POST /v1/code with codebook_ref: { question_id: '...' } pointing at a question that hasn’t been processed.
  • Exporting a codebook that doesn’t exist yet.

How to fix it

Section titled “How to fix it”
  1. Generate the codebook first: POST /v1/codebook/generate with the source question’s ID.
  2. Or run the one-call POST /v1/code on the source question — it generates the codebook in stage 2 as part of the same call.
  3. Once has_codebook: true on the source, retry the clone/reference.
Section titled “Related”