NPE because message is null.

[smccants]

I ran into the following NullPointerException:

16:40:01,170 |-ERROR in com.eclecticlogic.whisper.logback.WhisperAppender[whisper] - Appender [whisper] failed to append. java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.lang.NullPointerException
at at java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap.get(ConcurrentHashMap.java:768)
at at com.eclecticlogic.whisper.core.WhisperManager.log(WhisperManager.java:82)
at at com.eclecticlogic.whisper.logback.WhisperAppender.append(WhisperAppender.java:90)
at at com.eclecticlogic.whisper.logback.WhisperAppender.append(WhisperAppender.java:37)

I back tracked that to the original error message (logged by the File Appender):

14-01 16:40:01 [ajp-bio-8812-exec-12] com.hcs.data.dao.jdbc.util.JDBCDAOUtil ERROR null
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: Table 'webtl_orc_dev_1_4_3.procedures' doesn't exist

Which came from this code in my application:

   } catch (SQLException ex) {
        log.log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
    }

While you can make a good argument that it is poor form to provide a null message, it does not cause problems for Logback's File Appender or SMTP Appender. Even if the WhisperAppender didn't throw an NPE, it would cause problems for the digest if I have multiple different "errors" being logged with a null message.

So, my question/bug/concern is two fold:

1. Is there a better way to handle this then throwing an NPE when the message is null?
2. Is there a better way to recognize duplicate messages that have null messages?

I can fix my code, of course, but it is easy enough for another null message to creep back in at a later date (old programming habits can die hard), which could cause us to miss important error messages.

This may or may not be a bug, but I couldn't find anywhere else to raise the question, so my apologies if this was the wrong spot.

[smccants]

Did a quick search of my code and came up with 172 instances of log(Level.SEVERE, null,. Yikes!

[eclecticlogic]

Logging null is an application error but Whisper should handle it. For now I've modified the code to treat null as a string "null" for the log message. Please upgrade to 1.0.4. I just pushed 1.0.4 out so Maven Central's index may not have it. But if you simply change the version string in your pom, maven/gradle etc. should pull it.

[smccants]

Thanks for the prompt response and fix! Version 1.0.4 is working for me now.