Question

I’m developing a website using JSP and Servlets using Apache – tomcat 5.5 as server.
My application runs fine. But whenever I leave any webpage open and return back to it after some time say 30minutes, and click on any button or icon, it throws error sayin –

Sep 16, 2011 2:11:33 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve invoke
SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet jsp threw exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.apache.jsp.homepage_jsp._jspService(homepage_jsp.java:107)
    at org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:98)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:729)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:369)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:308)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:259)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:729)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:269)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:188)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:172)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127)
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:117)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:108)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:174)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:879)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11BaseProtocol.java:665)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:528)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.runIt(LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.java:81)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run(ThreadPool.java:689)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Answer 1

Sounds like your session is timing out. You need to either force the user to login again, or extend your session timeout.

You can change the session timeout by editing your web.xml and adding:

<session-config>
  <session-timeout>60</session-timeout>
</session-config>

Which will give you a session timeout of 60 minutes. -1 means there is no timeout.