Question

I was examining the use of ServletContext when i got the null pointer exception. I don’t understand why do i get this exception.

I have set the attribute in the context object from one class and then try to retrieve that from the second class using getAttribute(...).

package ServletContext; // servlet1

import javax.servlet.*; 
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class servlet1 extends HttpServlet {
  public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException,ServletException {
    LinkedList list = new LinkedList();
    list.add("suhail");
    ServletContext servletContext = getServletContext();
    servletContext.setAttribute("name", list);
  }
}

---

package ServletContext;  // servlet2

import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class servlet2 extends HttpServlet {
 public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request , HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException,ServletException {
    LinkedList list2 = new LinkedList();
    ServletContext context = getServletContext();
    list2 = (LinkedList)context.getAttribute("name");
    PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
    response.setContentType("text/plain");
    writer.println(list2.pop()); //**15th statement**
  }
}

Exception is :

HTTP Status 500 -

type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

java.lang.NullPointerException
ServletContext.servlet2.doGet(servlet2.java:15)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)
org.netbeans.modules.web.monitor.server.MonitorFilter.doFilter(MonitorFilter.java:393)

note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/7.0.11 logs.

Why am i getting this exception ? list should be initialized in servlet2

Answer 1

list2 is null there – you can’t invoke methods on null. Perhaps you still haven’t put the list in the servlet context? A null-check (if (list != null)) would fix the exception, but make sure you are properly putting the list in the context before you invoke the 2nd servlet.