Thread: small disaster with upgrade to 1.7.0_17-b02

I have a java gui that was written for me a few years ago to provide a user interface for a command line application. After updating my jre to 1.7.0_17-b02, the application will no longer start. I opened the src in eclipse and ran it in the debugger and I get a list of exceptions. I get the same exceptions at runtime if I run it from the command line with java -jar.

log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (com.intensivek.winmolconn.WinMolconn).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.intensivek.myapp.dialogs.OptionsDialog.initCom ponents(OptionsDialog.java:62)
at com.intensivek.myapp.dialogs.OptionsDialog.<init>( OptionsDialog.java:41)
at com.intensivek.myapp.appmain.<init>(appMain.java:2 63)
at com.intensivek.myapp.appmain$1.run(appMain.java:22 2)
at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEventImpl(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.access$200(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue$3.run(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue$3.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.security.ProtectionDomain$1.doIntersectionPri vilege(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilter s(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(U nknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarch y(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(Unknown Source)
at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(Unknown Source)

Looking at the src that is referenced here, this stuff is pretty bland,

(OptionsDialog.java:62) is:
border.setTitleFont(border.getTitleFont().deriveFo nt(Font.BOLD));

(OptionsDialog.java:41) is:
initComponents();

It seems as if the issue is with the function, private void initComponents() {}, so I have included that function below.

private void initComponents() {
	setTitle(myApp.TITLE + " - Options");
	getContentPane().setLayout(new MigLayout("fill"));
 
	oPanel = new JPanel(new MigLayout("fillx"));
	TitledBorder border = new TitledBorder("Option");
	border.setTitleFont(border.getTitleFont().deriveFont(Font.BOLD));
	oPanel.setBorder(border);
 
	oAutosaveCheckbox = new JCheckBox("Autosave GUI Configuration On Exit");
	oAutosaveCheckbox.setSelected(OptionsManager.getInstance().isAutosave());
	oPanel.add(oAutosaveCheckbox, "spanx, wrap");
 
	oFilenameLabel = new JLabel("Exe PATH:");
	oFilenameTextfield = new JTextField(OptionsManager.getInstance().getExecutablePath());
	oFilenameButton = new JButton("Open");
	oFilenameButton.addActionListener(this);
	oPanel.add(oFilenameLabel);
	oPanel.add(oFilenameTextfield, "growx, pushx");
	oPanel.add(oFilenameButton);
 
	add(oPanel, "spanx, growx, wrap");
 
	okButton = new JButton("Ok");
	okButton.addActionListener(this);
	add(okButton);
 
	cancelButton = new JButton("Cancel");
	cancelButton.addActionListener(this);
	add(cancelButton,"gap push");
}

I hope at this point that the rest of the exceptions are a cascade from something going wrong early in the application setup. I need to get this figured out. Are there any know issues with the most recent upgrade that may affect the execution of the code above?

These are the includes from the src file with the above function,

import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.io.File;
 
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JCheckBox;
import javax.swing.JDialog;
import javax.swing.JFileChooser;
import javax.swing.JLabel;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
import javax.swing.JTextField;
import javax.swing.border.TitledBorder;
 
import net.miginfocom.swing.MigLayout;
 
import com.intensivek.myapp.appMain;
import com.intensivek.myapp.utils.OptionsManager;

I am a c++/c/fortran programmer, so I am out of my depth here. I can post more of the code if that would be useful.

I looked at the sub forums to see if there was an appropriate one for this question, but nothing stood out to me. Please move this post if it was misplaced.

LMHmedchem

Originally Posted by Norm

Start by finding which variable on line 62 has the null value. Then backtrack to see why it has the null value.
Add a println() statement to print out the values of all the variables so you can see which one is null.

Thanks, I will try that. I assume I have to test this in debug mode and put a breakpoint somewhere, or will it still print the variables even with the exception?

LMHmedchem

This is the block of code with the issue, line in question (#62),

60	oPanel = new JPanel(new MigLayout("fillx"));
61	TitledBorder border = new TitledBorder("Option");
62	border.setTitleFont(border.getTitleFont().deriveFont(Font.BOLD));
63	oPanel.setBorder(border);

The only thing on line 62 that looks like a variable is Font. Both setTitleFont() and getTitleFont() are in javax.swing.border, and deriveFont() is in java.awt. I'm not sure what I can print here.

I added,
System.out.println( Font.BOLD );

to the line before 62 and ran the app as java -jar from the command line, but I just get the same error output and there is nothing extra printed. Would that imply that "Font" is null?

Thanks for your patience.

Sorry, I forgot to export the edited code to my jar file before running it. When I do, I get a value of 1 printed for System.out.println( Font.BOLD ). I'm not sure what else I can print there.

LMHmedchem

I added the following to the line before the exception,

	System.out.println( " " );
	System.out.println( "test print" );
	System.out.println( Font.BOLD );
	System.out.println( border );
	System.out.println( border.getTitleFont() );
	System.out.println( " " );

The results to the terminal are,
test print
1
javax.swing.border.TitledBorder@129373c
null

This means that border.getTitleFont() is returning null. I guess my question at this point is why does this suddenly not work when it was fine for several years.

There are some bug reports for this,
Bug ID: 7117283 NullpointerException when using TitleBorder.getTitleFont
and it appears to be an issue with java 7. These reports are not new, so I assume this has been fixed or there is a workaround.

Does anyone have anymore information on this, or can someone suggest a workaround?

LMHmedchem

I posted a reply to this, but it did not post, presumably because it had a link to a bug report. I would suggest that it would be alright to allow links to bugs.sun.com without moderator approval, since such a link would be unlikely to contain spam.

At any rate, based on the print output, it appears as if border.getTitleFont() is returning null. There are several bug reports on this and it seems to have appeared with java 7. None of the reports were new, so I would guess that this has been resolved. Does anyone have any additional information or a workaround to suggest?

LMHmedchem

One of the questions I have is why this worked up until recently, meaning that this code has existed for years and has never thrown this exception before. If there was an error in javax.swing.border such that getTitleFont() started improperly returning null, then that should have been corrected, right? Is this likely still a bug, or has the syntax for this function changed, etc? In short, why is it returning null now when it never has before?

It's hard to say since I didn't write this, but one of the issues we were trying to resolve was to make sure that the gui had a reasonable appearance at different dpi settings, up to 144dpi (%150). I am wondering if hard coding TitledBorder.font would have a negative impact on that aspect. If I was going to use setTitledFont directly, what would I set the font to and what would that look like? I suppose I would have to know what font was used by the default look and feel. It seems as if we had some look and feel options available at one point (in a menu), but I'm not sure those are still there.

Just to get it going, I have added the following to the six places in the code where setTitleFont() was called.

Font myFont = new Font("ariel", Font.BOLD, 17);
border.setTitleFont(myFont);

This gets the app working again. The original look and feel must be located here in the original src code. Where can I look to find out what font was originally being set?

LMHmedchem