Handle non-UTF-8 and invalid JSON responses from WLED device

[mik-laj]

Proposed Changes

Some WLED devices can return corrupt data that causes an unhandled exception in the integration, silently presenting the user with a generic "Failed to connect" or "An unknown error occurred" message with no diagnostic information in the logs.

Two concrete failure modes observed in the wild ( home-assistant/core#162199
):

1. Corrupt presets.json — the device returns binary garbage (e.g. bytes starting with \xff\xfe), which causes response.text() to raise UnicodeDecodeError before any JSON parsing takes place.
2. Invalid JSON — the device returns a response with Content-Type: application/json but the body is not valid JSON, causing orjson.loads() to raise JSONDecodeError.

Both exceptions were previously unhandled and propagated as unexpected errors. This change catches them explicitly and raises WLEDInvalidResponseError (a new exception class) with a message that includes the HTTP method and URI, making it straightforward to identify the problematic endpoint in logs.

Changes:

• Add WLEDInvalidResponseError(WLEDError) to exceptions.py
• Wrap response.text() in a try/except UnicodeDecodeError
• Wrap orjson.loads() in a try/except orjson.JSONDecodeError
• Add tests for all four new error paths (/json and /presets.json × non-UTF-8 and invalid JSON)

References: home-assistant/core#162199

Related Issues

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 2c2bb40 and 02a12ad.

📒 Files selected for processing (4)

• src/wled/__init__.py
• src/wled/exceptions.py
• src/wled/wled.py
• tests/test_wled.py

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[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 97.25%. Comparing base (3e87d76) to head (02a12ad).
⚠️ Report is 598 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #2052       +/-   ##
===========================================
+ Coverage   58.61%   97.25%   +38.64%     
===========================================
  Files           6        8        +2     
  Lines         662     1094      +432     
  Branches      143      112       -31     
===========================================
+ Hits          388     1064      +676     
+ Misses        270       20      -250     
- Partials        4       10        +6     

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR improves robustness of the WLED client when devices return corrupt responses by converting non-UTF-8 and invalid-JSON payload failures into a dedicated, more diagnostic exception (WLEDInvalidResponseError) rather than letting decode/parse errors propagate as unexpected exceptions.

Changes:

• Introduces WLEDInvalidResponseError to represent invalid/corrupt responses from the device.
• Catches UnicodeDecodeError from response.text() and orjson.JSONDecodeError from orjson.loads() and raises WLEDInvalidResponseError including {method} {uri} context.
• Adds update() tests covering corrupt /json and /presets.json responses (invalid JSON and non-UTF-8).

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

File	Description
src/wled/wled.py	Adds explicit handling for non-UTF-8 and invalid JSON responses in the request pipeline.
src/wled/exceptions.py	Adds a new exception type WLEDInvalidResponseError.
tests/test_wled.py	Adds parametrized tests for corrupt /json and /presets.json update flows.

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[frenck]

Thanks, @mik-laj 👍

../Frenck

                       

Blogging my personal ramblings at frenck.dev