java.lang.NullPointerException while creating DiskFileItem

Question

I am trying to write a unit test for handling a file upload controller using Spring 3. Now if I send the image over to my service method through the controller everything works fine. But when doing a straight unit tests I am getting a null pointer exception.

It appears that the property "dfos" inside the DiskFilteItem is null when I instantiate it manually but it is populated when retrieving a MultipartFile from the controller.

    File file = new File("//Users//test//Downloads//testimage.jpg");
    log.info("found file: " +file.exists());
    log.info("file size: " +file.length());
    String fieldName = "field";
    String contentType = "image/jpeg";
    boolean isFormField = false;
    String fileName = "testimage.jpg";
    int sizeThreshold = 10240;

    DiskFileItemFactory factory = new DiskFileItemFactory();

    DiskFileItemFactory factory = new DiskFileItemFactory();
    // throws null pointer
    FileItem fi = factory.createItem(fieldName,contentType,isFormField,fileName);

    // so does this one
    DiskFileItem item = new DiskFileItem(fieldName, contentType, isFormField, fileName, sizeThreshold, file);
    MultipartFile f = new CommonsMultipartFile(item);

I feel like I am missing something silly in my setup. My pom file contains the following dependencies.

    <dependency>
        <groupId>commons-fileupload</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-fileupload</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
        <version>2.0</version>
    </dependency>

This code throws the following stack trace

java.lang.NullPointerException
 at org.apache.commons.fileupload.disk.DiskFileItem.getSize(DiskFileItem.java:316)
 at org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartFile.(CommonsMultipartFile.java:60)
 at ImgurClientTest.testUploadImage(ImgurClientTest.java:58)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod$1.runReflectiveCall(FrameworkMethod.java:44)
 at org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:15)
 at org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod.invokeExplosively(FrameworkMethod.java:41)
 at org.junit.internal.runners.statements.InvokeMethod.evaluate(InvokeMethod.java:20)
 at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.RunBeforeTestMethodCallbacks.evaluate(RunBeforeTestMethodCallbacks.java:74)
 at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.RunAfterTestMethodCallbacks.evaluate(RunAfterTestMethodCallbacks.java:82)
 at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.SpringRepeat.evaluate(SpringRepeat.java:72)
 at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:240)
 at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:50)
 at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$3.run(ParentRunner.java:193)
 at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$1.schedule(ParentRunner.java:52)
 at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runChildren(ParentRunner.java:191)
 at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.access$000(ParentRunner.java:42)
 at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$2.evaluate(ParentRunner.java:184)
 at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.RunBeforeTestClassCallbacks.evaluate(RunBeforeTestClassCallbacks.java:61)
 at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.RunAfterTestClassCallbacks.evaluate(RunAfterTestClassCallbacks.java:70)
 at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.run(ParentRunner.java:236)
 at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.run(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:180)
 at org.junit.runner.JUnitCore.run(JUnitCore.java:157)
 at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.main(JUnitStarter.java:65)

Answer 1

I ran into the same problem. The issue is that DiskFileItem.getSize() is temporally coupled with DiskFileItem.getOutputStream() in that an internal field is initialized in getOutputStream and used in getSize .

The solution is to do

final File TEST_FILE = new File("src/test/resources/test.jpg");
final DiskFileItem diskFileItem = new DiskFileItem("file", "image/jpeg", true, TEST_FILE.getName(), 100000000, TEST_FILE.getParentFile());
diskFileItem.getOutputStream();

before passing diskFileItem to the constructor of CommonsMultipartFile .

Answer 2

And if none of the solutions above work for you as it happened for me :) simply ditch the DiskFileItem and use the solution bellow:

  final File fileToUpload = new File("src/test/resources/files/test.txt");
  final MultiValueMap<String, Object> request = new LinkedMultiValueMap<String, Object>();
  request.add("file", new FileSystemResource(fileToUpload.getAbsolutePath()));

Answer 3

What does this part of this log say?

log.info("found file: " +file.exists());
log.info("file size: " +file.length());

But I think the problem might be because of this:

File file = new File("//Users//test//Downloads//");

It looks like it's pointing to a directory instead of a file, so maybe that is why you are getting a NullPointerException when you want to get the size of DiskFileItem

Answer 4

Although not entirely related to the question. I ran into the same exception when deploying some file-upload code to GAE. I modified systempuntoout's code from here using apache fileupload on GAE (which uses the streams part of apache commons) which then worked fine.

Answer 5

new DiskFileItem(fieldName, contentType, isFormField, fileName, sizeThreshold, file);

results in a null value. Look into the docs to see what's wrong or maybe you pass some null as parameters