ChromaVectorStore throws NullPointerException on document add about spring-ai

[tzolov]

@habuma, By specification the upsert endpoint is expected to return a boolean: https://docs.trychroma.com/js_reference/Collection#returns-8
Furthermore the existing IT is successfully verifying this behaviour:

spring-ai/vector-stores/spring-ai-chroma/src/test/java/org/springframework/ai/chroma/ChromaApiIT.java

Lines 88 to 90 in 2f89124

	var success = chroma.upsertEmbeddings(newCollection.id(), addEmbeddingRequest);
	assertThat(success).isTrue();

So I'm puzzled by the statement?

(I've confirmed this by using curl to POST documents to the upsert endpoint)
Could it be that we are running different Chroma version (the ITs are based on the chroma:0.4.15)?

[habuma]

I'm running 0.4.22. (Started by Spring Boot's Docker Compose support via a docker-compose.yaml).

I just now used curl to POST a few broken JSON files to the upsert endpoint and get responses like this one:

{"error":"IndexError('list index out of range')"}

(In this case, I had two IDs, but only 1 document and 1 set of embeddings in the body.)

If there's a JSON error (e.g., a missing comma) I get a response like this:

{"detail":[{"type":"json_invalid","loc":["body",21],"msg":"JSON decode error","input":{},"ctx":{"error":"Expecting ',' delimiter"}}]}

But, if the body that I'm posting is correct and if the document is added successfully, I get this:

null

Per the Swagger documentation at http://localhost:8000/docs, the response for a success should be an any. The response for a validation error should be a JSON response similar to what I show above for a JSON error. (The Swagger doc doesn't mention the other JSON response, but I can assure you that I get it.)

Moreover, what even led me to this was much higher level. I have the following code that exhibits what I'm seeing:

    @Bean
    ApplicationRunner go(VectorStore vectorStore) {
        return args -> {
            try {
                vectorStore.add(List.of(new Document("99999", "Rich Purnell is a steely eyed missile man.", Map.of("test", "doc"))));
            } catch (Exception e) {
                System.err.println("Error adding documents: " + e);
                // ignore errors because of problem with Chroma vector store
            }
        };
    }

When run, I see this in the console:

Error adding documents: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "java.lang.Boolean.booleanValue()" because "success" is null

[habuma]

Followup: I changed my docker-compose.yaml to force 0.4.15 and I do get true when a document is successfully upserted. So, something changed between 0.4.15 and 0.4.22.

The comments on chroma-core/chroma#1466 mention this behavior, saying it was introduced in 0.4.16 and suggesting that it is intentional, not a bug.

[tzolov]

@habuma thanks for clarifying this.
Maybe they did some breaking changes in the API.
Will investigate further with the 0.4.22

[tzolov]

@habuma i can confirm that Chroma has changed their API, so that the upsert doesn't return boolean anymore.
Their JS client docs still claims that it is possible , but the Python counterpart suggest None as return value.
Also noticed another change in the getEmbedding as well. The where filter doesn't doesn't support the complex operators (like with the query) but only simple matches.
A fix for the above issues will follow shortly.