What is a NullPointerException, and how do I fix it?

When you declare a reference variable (i.e. an object) you are really creating a pointer to an object. Consider the following code where you declare a variable of primitive type int:

int x;
x = 10;

In this example, the variable x is an int and Java will initialize it to 0 for you. When you assign it to 10 in the second line your value 10 is written into the memory location pointed to by x.

But, when you try to declare a reference type something different happens. Take the following code:

Integer num;
num = new Integer(10);

The first line declares a variable named num, but, it does not contain a primitive value. Instead, it contains a pointer (because the type is Integer which is a reference type). Since you did not say as yet what to point to Java sets it to null, meaning "I am pointing at nothing".

In the second line, the new keyword is used to instantiate (or create) an object of type Integer and the pointer variable num is assigned this object. You can now reference the object using the dereferencing operator . (a dot).

The Exception that you asked about occurs when you declare a variable but did not create an object. If you attempt to dereference num BEFORE creating the object you get a NullPointerException. In the most trivial cases, the compiler will catch the problem and let you know that "num may not have been initialized" but sometimes you write code that does not directly create the object.

For instance, you may have a method as follows:

public void doSomething(SomeObject obj) {
   //do something to obj
}

in which case you are not creating the object obj, rather assuming that it was created before the doSomething method was called. Unfortunately, it is possible to call the method like this:

doSomething(null);

in which case obj is null. If the method is intended to do something to the passed-in object, it is appropriate to throw the NullPointerException because it's a programmer error and the programmer will need that information for debugging purposes.

Alternatively, there may be cases where the purpose of the method is not solely to operate on the passed in object, and therefore a null parameter may be acceptable. In this case, you would need to check for a null parameter and behave differently. You should also explain this in the documentation. For example, doSomething could be written as:

/**
  * @param obj An optional foo for ____. May be null, in which case 
  *  the result will be ____.
  */
public void doSomething(SomeObject obj) {
    if(obj != null) {
       //do something
    } else {
       //do something else
    }
}




Fixes:




1. The best way to avoid this type of exception is to always check for null when you did not create the object yourself." If the caller passes null, but null is not a valid argument for the method, then it's correct to throw the exception back at the caller because it's the caller's fault. Silently ignoring invalid input and doing nothing in the method is extremely poor advice because it hides the problem

2. I would add a remark about this post explaining that even assignments to primitives can cause NPEs when using autoboxing: int a=b can throw an NPE if b is an Integer. There are cases where this is confusing to debug.

3. An additional way of avoiding NullPointerException problems in your code is to use @Nullable and  @NotNull annotations.

Basically, you've got @Nullable and @NotNull.

You can use in method and parameters, like this:

@NotNull public static String helloWorld() {
    return "Hello World";
}

or

@Nullable public static String helloWorld() {
    return "Hello World";
}

The second example won't compile.

When you use the first helloWorld() function in another piece of code:

public static void main(String[] args)
{
    String result = helloWorld();
    if(result != null) {
        System.out.println(result);
    }
}

Now the compiler will tell you that the check is useless, since the helloWorld()function won't return null, ever.

Using parameter

void someMethod(@NotNull someParameter) { }

if you write something like:

someMethod(null);

This won't compile.

Last example using @Nullable

@Nullable iWantToDestroyEverything() { return null; }

Doing this

iWantToDestroyEverything().something();

And you can be sure that this won't happen. :)

It's a nice way to let the compiler check something more than it usually does and to enforce your contracts to be stronger.

source: stackoverflow