[coldbox-4.3.0+188] java.lang.NullPointerException on evaluate environment function

Communities ColdBox HMVC
1

Hello

I am seeing the below error when coldbox loads.

“The system has attempted to use an undefined value, which usually indicates a programming error, either in your code or some system code. Null Pointers are another name for undefined values.”

This is something that happens mostly on production after a cf update or restarts and didn’t see it happen in a staging environment till today ( I did a restart of CF service yesterday ) to debug. Another restart fixes the issue.

The application loads correctly up to \coldbox\system\web\config\ApplicationLoader.cfc - // call environment method if exists

if( structKeyExists(arguments.oConfig,configStruct.environment) ){
evaluate(“arguments.oConfig.#configStruct.environment#()” );
}

To debug I updated the code like below

if( structKeyExists(arguments.oConfig,configStruct.environment) ){
try {
evaluate(“arguments.oConfig.#configStruct.environment#()” );
}
catch(any e) {
writeDump(“failed!”);
writeDump(e);
writeDump(configStruct.environment);
writeDump(arguments.oConfig.staging());
writeDump(arguments.oConfig);
}
abort;
}

with below results

failed!

struct
Message [empty string]
StackTrace java.lang.NullPointerException
Suppressed
array [empty]

TagContext
array [empty]

Type java.lang.NullPointerException

staging //configStruct.environment
hello //arguments.oConfig.staging()

STAGING
function staging

Arguments: none
ReturnType: Any

Roles:

Access: public

Output:
DisplayName:
Hint: staging environment
Description:

body of staging function in coldbox.cfc

function staging() { // it is an empty function - just used a return string to get an output for dump.
return “hello”;
}

writeDump(arguments.oConfig.staging()); //works
writeDump(arguments.oConfig.STAGING()); //works
writeDump(evaluate(“arguments.oConfig.STAGING()”)); //works
writeDump(evaluate(“arguments.oConfig.staging()”)); //fails

My questions :

  1. Why is evaluate being picky on case of the function name - but not always? If I do a fwreinit many times after the app loads once - its fine.
  2. Change the detectenvironment() function to return upper case string? I did do evaluate( “arguments.oConfig.#UCase(configStruct.environment)#()” ); and it worked.

Thanks,

Aswin

2

Never seen this issue before.

What’s your O/S, Web server, and ColdFusion version?

3

ColdFusion 11,0,13,303668 Enterprise
Windows Server 2012 IIS

4

That’s very odd. Seems like a surprising bug in Adobe CF 11. Can you create a repro case with a simple CFC that has a single method and a page that calls that method with evaluate() using the wrong case. If that still errors, I’d say put in a ticket for Adobe to fix it. You might want to test it on 2016 as well in case it’s a bug they’ve already fixed on newer versions.

5

No - I am not able to recreate it in CF11 or CF2016 with a simple CFC. The issues doesn’t happen after first getting the issues and then restarting the server to fix it. So I am not sure how to recreate that situation either.

I have updated detect env. function to return upper case - will see if it happens again.

Thanks,
Aswin