Accessing PDF for the first time causes 404

26. Feb 2008, 15:23 CET | Link Chris Lowe

Hello,

I'm having difficulty accessing a Seam generated PDF, but only for the first time where I get a 404 error and the following exception:

14:12:07,753 WARN  [lifecycle] phase(RENDER_RESPONSE 6,com.sun.faces.context.FacesContextImpl@d70e2c) threw exception: java.lang.NullPointerException null
org.jboss.seam.pdf.DocumentStorePhaseListener.sendContent(DocumentStorePhaseListener.java:47)
org.jboss.seam.pdf.DocumentStorePhaseListener.beforePhase(DocumentStorePhaseListener.java:37)
com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.phase(LifecycleImpl.java:222)
com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.render(LifecycleImpl.java:144)
javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:245)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:290)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:83)
org.jboss.seam.debug.hot.HotDeployFilter.doFilter(HotDeployFilter.java:68)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
org.jboss.seam.web.MultipartFilter.doFilter(MultipartFilter.java:85)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
org.jboss.seam.web.ExceptionFilter.doFilter(ExceptionFilter.java:64)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
org.jboss.seam.web.RedirectFilter.doFilter(RedirectFilter.java:44)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseXMLFilter.doXmlFilter(BaseXMLFilter.java:141)
org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseFilter.doFilter(BaseFilter.java:281)
org.jboss.seam.web.Ajax4jsfFilter.doFilter(Ajax4jsfFilter.java:60)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
org.jboss.seam.web.LoggingFilter.doFilter(LoggingFilter.java:58)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:158)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:235)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.jboss.web.tomcat.filters.ReplyHeaderFilter.doFilter(ReplyHeaderFilter.java:96)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:235)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:230)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:175)
org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.SecurityAssociationValve.invoke(SecurityAssociationValve.java:179)
org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:432)
org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.JaccContextValve.invoke(JaccContextValve.java:84)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127)
org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102)
org.jboss.web.tomcat.service.jca.CachedConnectionValve.invoke(CachedConnectionValve.java:157)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:109)
org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:262)
org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:844)
org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11Protocol.java:583)
org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Worker.run(JIoEndpoint.java:446)
java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

If I access the same URL again within the same browser session then everything works as expected.

I'm accessing the PDF from a Flex application so when the PDF is first called then this is actually the first time that the Seam application is invoked. So maybe there is some initialisation that is missing somewhere?

An obvious work around (hack!) for this is to get the Flex app to quietly access the Seam app in the background prior to accessing the PDF, but I only want to do this as a last resort. Is there any reason why PDF generation would be behave in this way?

Cheers,

Chris.