Api in .Net Core System.NullReferenceException

Question

I just started learning aboout Api'sand started building a simple one. I built this EmployeeController:

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace ApiHandsOn1.Controllers
{
    [Route("api/Employee")]
    [ApiController]
    public class EmployeeController : Controller
    {
        List<Employee> _employeeList = new List<Employee>()
            {
                new Employee()
                {
                    Id=1,
                    Name= "abc def",
                    Salary=20000,
                    Permanent= true,
                    //Department= { Id = 1, Name = "Payroll"},
                    Skills ={new Skill{ Id= 1 , Value= "HTML"},new Skill{ Id= 2 , Value="CSS"},new Skill{ Id= 1 , Value= "JS"} },
                    DateOfBirth = new DateTime(01/03/2002)
                },
                new Employee()
                {
                    Id=2,
                    Name= "ghi jkl",
                    Salary=25000,
                    Permanent= false,
                    //Department= { Id = 2, Name = "HR"},
                    Skills ={new Skill{ Id= 1 , Value= "HTML"},new Skill{ Id= 2 , Value="CSS"},new Skill{ Id= 1 , Value= "JS"} },
                    DateOfBirth = new DateTime(15/08/2005)
                }
            };

        public EmployeeController()
        {
            
        }

        private List<Employee> GetStandardEmployeeList()
        {
            
            return _employeeList;
        }
        // GET: EmployeeController
        [HttpGet]
        [Route("GetEmployees")]
        [ProducesResponseType(StatusCodes.Status200OK)]
        public List<Employee> GetStandard()
        {
            List<Employee> empList=GetStandardEmployeeList();
            return empList;
        }

       
    }
}

I have built models for respective classes. But when I hit execute on Swagger, it throws an exception(at _employeeList):

System.NullReferenceException: 'Object reference not set to an instance of an object.'

What am I missing?

Answer 1

You need to initialize the Skills property like this:

Skills = new List<Skill>(){new Skill{}, new Skill{}}

and as @smoksnes mentioned, you should put your value between literals in DateTime Initialization