Error With ServletContextListener

Question

I am studying servlets and I made one example from book but I got nullpointerexception.

Here are my classes:

package chala;

public class Dog {


private String breed;

public Dog(String breed) {
    this.breed = breed;
}

public String getBreed() {
    return breed;
}

public void setBreed(String breed) {
    this.breed = breed;
}

}

Dog class is POJO class with simple functionality.

package chala;

import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletContextEvent;
import javax.servlet.ServletContextListener;

public class CtxListener implements ServletContextListener {

@Override
public void contextDestroyed(ServletContextEvent event) {
    ServletContext sc = event.getServletContext();
    String breed = sc.getInitParameter("breed");
    Dog d = new Dog(breed);
    sc.setAttribute("dog", d);

}

@Override
public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent event) {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

}

This is context listener class where I get servlet context object, get init parameter from it, and creating Dog object, then setting attribute of servlet context.

package chala;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;

import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

/**
 * Servlet implementation class CtxListenerTester
 */
 @WebServlet("/CtxListenerTester")
public class CtxListenerTester extends HttpServlet {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

    response.setContentType("text/html");
    PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();

    out.println("Servlet Context Listener Example");
    out.print("<BR/>");
    ServletContext sc = (ServletContext) getServletContext();
    System.out.println(sc.getAttribute("dog"));
    Dog dog = (Dog) getServletContext().getAttribute("dog");

    out.print("Dogs breed is :" + dog.getBreed());
}

protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
}

}

This is my servlet where I am getting servlet context attribute (DOG object) and calling Dogs getBreed() method. When I start and send GET request I am getting nullpointerexception.

Here is my web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
    id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
    <display-name>ContextListenerDemo</display-name>
    <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
        <welcome-file>index.htm</welcome-file>
        <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
        <welcome-file>default.html</welcome-file>
        <welcome-file>default.htm</welcome-file>
        <welcome-file>default.jsp</welcome-file>
    </welcome-file-list>



    <context-param>
        <param-name>breed</param-name>
        <param-value>Labrador</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>chala.CtxListener</listener-class>
    </listener>


</web-app>

Answer 1

you set the attribute in contextDestroyed() method that will invoked while context is being destroyed you need to set that attribute in contextInitialized()