How to trace a NullPointerException in a chain of getters

Question

If I get a NullPointerException in a call like this:

someObject.getSomething().getSomethingElse().
    getAnotherThing().getYetAnotherObject().getValue();
         


        

Answer 1

I generally do not chain getters like this where there is more than one nullable getter.

If you're running inside your ide you can just set a breakpoint and use the "evaluate expression" functionality of your ide on each element successively.

But you're going to be scratching your head the moment you get this error message from your production server logs. So best keep max one nullable item per line.

Meanwhile we can dream of groovy's safe navigation operator