Java Pitfalls - Nulls and NullPointerException

Remarks

The value null is the default value for an uninitialized value of a field whose type is a reference type.

NullPointerException (or NPE) is the exception that is thrown when you attempt to perform an inappropriate operation on the null object reference. Such operations include:

calling an instance method on a null target object,
accessing a field of a null target object,
attempting to index a null array object or access its length,
using a null object reference as the mutex in a synchronized block,
casting a null object reference,
unboxing a null object reference, and
throwing a null object reference.

The most common root causes for NPEs:

forgetting to initialize a field with a reference type,
forgetting to initialize elements of an array of a reference type, or
not testing the results of certain API methods that are specified as returning null in certain circumstances.

Examples of commonly used methods that return null include:

The get(key) method in the Map API will return a null if you call it with a key that doesn’t have a mapping.
The getResource(path) and getResourceAsStream(path) methods in the ClassLoader and Class APIs will return null if the resource cannot be found.
The get() method in the Reference API will return null if the garbage collector has cleared the reference.
Various getXxxx methods in the Java EE servlet APIs will return null if you attempt fetch a non-existent request parameter, session or session attribute and so on.

There are strategies for avoiding unwanted NPEs, such as explicitly testing for null or using “Yoda Notation”, but these strategies often have the undesirable result of hiding problems in your code that really ought to be fixed.

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

Pitfalls - nulls and NullPointerException:

* Java Pitfalls - Nulls and NullPointerException

* Pitfall - Making good unexpected nulls

* Pitfall - Using null to represent an empty array or collection

* Pitfall - Returning null instead of throwing an exception

* Pitfall - Not checking if an IO stream isnt even initialized when closing it

* Pitfall - Using Yoda notation to avoid NullPointerException

* Pitfall - Unnecessary use of Primitive Wrappers can lead to NullPointerExceptions

Table Of Contents

0 Inheritance

1 Getting started with Java

2 Streams

3 Exceptions

4 Collections

5 Lambda Expressions

6 Generics

7 File I/O

8 Arrays

9 Interfaces

10 Maps

11 Strings

12 InputStreams and OutputStreams

13 Default Methods

14 Classes and Objects

15 Basic Control structures

16 Concurrent Programming Threads

17 Console I/O

18 Singletons

19 Visibility controlling access to members of a class

20 Regular Expressions

21 Autoboxing

22 Documenting Java Code

23 Executor, ExecutorService and Thread pools

24 Object Class Methods and Constructor

25 JAXB

26 Primitive Data Types

27 Networking

28 Optional

29 Enums

30 HttpURLConnection

31 Annotations

32 Audio

33 Data Class

34 Calendar and its Subclasses

35 Nashorn JavaScript engine

36 Java Native Interface (JNI)

37 Remote Method Invocation (RMI)

38 Iterator and Iterable

39 Operators

40 Asserting

41 Scanner

42 Properties Class

43 Preferences

44 Reflection API

45 Constructors

46 ByteBuffer

47 Serialization

48 JSON in Java

49 Random Number Generation

50 Recursion

51 Polymorphism

52 StringBuilder

53 Refernce Data Types

54 Bit Manipulation

55 Java Agents

56 Encapsulation

57 Type Conversion

58 BigInteger

59 BigDecimal

60 RSA Encryption

61 Varargs Variable Arguments

62 ThreadLocal

63 Logging

64 static keyword

65 Disassembling and Decompling

66 Resources on classpath

67 log4j, log4j2

68 JVM Flags

69 Oracle Official Code Standard

70 Character encoding

71 Java Memory Management

72 Immutable Objects

73 Object Cloning

74 Alternative Collections

75 Lists

76 BufferedWriter

77 LocalTime

78 Sets

79 Comparable and Comparator

80 JVM Tool Interface

81 Nested and Inner Classes

82 Apache Commons Lang

83 Getters and Setter

84 The Classpath

85 Bytecode Modification

86 XML Parsing using JAXP

87 Reference Types

88 Localization and Internationalization

89 JAX-WS

90 XML XPath Evaluation

91 Performance Tuning

92 Parallel programming with ForkJoin framework

93 Common Pitfalls

94 Non-Access Modifiers

95 Java Compiler

96 XJC

97 Installing Java Standard Edition

98 Process

99 Command line argument processing

100 Dates and Time using java.time

101 Fluent Interface

102 XOM - XML Object Model

103 Just in Time JIT compiler

104 FTP File Transfer Protocol

105 Java Native Access JNI

106 Modules

107 Pitfalls - exceptions

108 Pitfalls - language syntax

109 ServiceLoader

110 ClasssLoader

111 Object References

112 Pitfalss - performance

113 Creating Images Programmatically

114 Applets

115 NIO Networking

116 New File I/O

117 Secure objects

118 Pitfalls - threads and concurrency

119 Splitting a string into fixed length parts

120 Pitfalls - nulls and NullPointerException

121 SecurityManager

122 JNDI

123 super keyword

124 java.util.Objects class

125 Java command: java and javaw

126 Atomic types

127 Floating Point Operations

128 Converting to and from strings

129 sun.misc.Unsafe

130 Java Memory Model

131 Java deployment

132 Java plugin system implementations

133 Queues and deques

134 Runtime commands

135 NumberFormat

136 Security and Cryptograhy

137 Java Virtual Machine JVM

138 Unit Testing

139 JavaBean

140 Expressions

141 Literals

142 Java SE 8 Features

143 Java SE 7 Features

144 Packages

145 Concurrency and Money

146 Concurrent Collections

147 Using ThreadPoolExecutor in multi-threaded applications

148 Java Editions, versions, releases and distributions

149 Dynamic method dispatch

150 JMX

151 Security and cryptography

152 Generating Java Code

153 JShell

154 Benchmarks

155 Collection Factory Methods

156 Multi-release JAR files

157 Stack-Walking API

158 TreeMap and TreeSet

159 Sockets

160 Java Sockets

161 Using other scripting languages in Java

162 Functional interfaces

163 List vs. set

164 2D graphics

165 Reflection

166 Deque interface

167 Enum Map

168 EnumSet class

169 Local Inner class

170 Java Print Service

171 Immutable class

172 String Tokenizer

173 File upload to S3 / AWS

174 Readers and writers

175 Hashtable

176 Enum starting with a number

177 SortedMap

178 WeakHashMap

179 LinkedHashMap

180 StringBuffer

181 Choosing Collections

182 C++ Comparison

183 CompletableFuture

184 Contributors