[HIVEMIND-78] Certain classloaders (AntClassLoader for example) cause NullPointerException in impl.MessageFormatter

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 1.0, 1.1
• Fix Version/s: 1.1
• Component/s: framework
• Environment: MacOSX. Running unit tests of code running within hivemind using JUnit inside Ant inside Maven.
• Assignee: James Carman
• Reporter: Paul Russell
• Created: 21/Nov/04 22:51
• Updated: 04/May/05 22:19
• Resolved: 04/May/05 22:19

Description

MessageFormat uses java.lang.Class.getPackage() to obtain the name of the package for the 'reference class' in order to choose an appropriate resource bundle. Unfortunately, java.lang.Class.getPackage() does not guarantee to return a Package object.

It may return 'null' if (a) the reference class is loaded by the primordial classloader, or (b) if the classloader didn't create a package object and associated it with the class.

I am seeing this problem while running unit tests of my application within Maven. Example stacktrace follows:

java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at org.apache.hivemind.impl.RegistryImpl.getServicePoint(RegistryImpl.java:142)
at org.apache.hivemind.impl.RegistryImpl.getService(RegistryImpl.java:149)
at org.apache.hivemind.impl.RegistryImpl.startup(RegistryImpl.java:321)
at org.apache.hivemind.impl.RegistryBuilder.constructRegistry(RegistryBuilder.java:417)
... lots more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.hivemind.impl.MessageFormatter.<init>(MessageFormatter.java:49)
at org.apache.hivemind.impl.MessageFormatter.<init>(MessageFormatter.java:44)
at org.apache.hivemind.impl.ImplMessages.<clinit>(ImplMessages.java:45)
... 59 more

The only safe way that I can see to achieve the same effect as Class.getPackage().getName() is to do something like:

String lReferenceClassName = referenceClass.getName();
String lPackageName = lReferenceClassName.substring(0,lReferenceClassName.lastIndexOf('.'));

... probably as a private function within MessageFormat itself.