Hitting java.lang.IllegalStateException: null when call setAttribute() in HttpSession

Question

Good day,

The following is my java code:

Map< String, Account > accountMap = result.getAccountsMap( );
if ( accountMap != null )
    command.getSession( ).setAttribute( Constants.OA, accountMap ); 

And then on and off it will hitting IllegalStateException since today morning:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: null at com.ibm.ws.session.http.HttpSessionImpl.setAttribute(HttpSessionImpl.java:248) ~[com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.jar:na] at com.ibm.ws.session.SessionData.putSessionValue(SessionData.java:293) ~[com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.jar:na] at com.ibm.ws.session.SessionData.setAttribute(SessionData.java:217) ~[com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.jar:na] at com.ibm.ws.session.HttpSessionFacade.setAttribute(HttpSessionFacade.java:169) ~[com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.jar:na]

I tried to google about this, but its seems like a very common exception, and I have no idea how/where should I continue to troubleshoot.

This application is running on WAS 8.5.5.

Can anyone advise me on this?

Answer 1

I would guess that the session is invalid at this point. Can you add a check to isRequestedSessionIdValid() ? The fact that you're pulling it from a command object, rather than from an HttpServletRequest directly, means it could easily be an old, invalidated one.

Answer 2

That is correct, this was due to the method is called on an invalidated session:

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/servletapi/javax/servlet/http/HttpSession.html#setAttribute(java.lang.String,%20java.lang.Object)

HttpServletRequest.getSession(false) should also returns null at that point.