[jira] [Created] (CXF-7174) NullPointerException when Content-Type is not specified in the http request

["Andy McCright (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

Andy McCright created CXF-7174:
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             Summary: NullPointerException when Content-Type is not specified in the http request
                 Key: CXF-7174
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CXF-7174
             Project: CXF
          Issue Type: Bug
          Components: JAX-RS
    Affects Versions: 3.1.8
            Reporter: Andy McCright


When the Content-Type header is not specified in the HttpServletRequest, a null pointer is possible when calling Headers.copyFromRequest(...) followed by Headers.determineContentType().  This scenario is possible when using non-traditional clients like curl.

Here is an example (snippet) of the NPE:
2016-12-09T09:29:47.24-0600 [APP/0]      ERR Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
2016-12-09T09:29:47.24-0600 [APP/0]      ERR    at org.apache.cxf.transport.http.Headers.determineContentType(Headers.java:374)
2016-12-09T09:29:47.24-0600 [APP/0]      ERR    at org.apache.cxf.transport.http.Headers.setProtocolHeadersInConnection(Headers.java:363)
2016-12-09T09:29:47.24-0600 [APP/0]      ERR    at org.apache.cxf.transport.http.URLConnectionHTTPConduit$URLConnectionWrappedOutputStream.setProtocolHeaders(URLConnectionHTTPConduit.java:279)
2016-12-09T09:29:47.24-0600 [APP/0]      ERR    at org.apache.cxf.transport.http.HTTPConduit$WrappedOutputStream.handleHeadersTrustCaching(HTTPConduit.java:1301)
2016-12-09T09:29:47.24-0600 [APP/0]      ERR    at org.apache.cxf.transport.http.HTTPConduit$WrappedOutputStream.close(HTTPConduit.java:1337)
2016-12-09T09:29:47.24-0600 [APP/0]      ERR    ... 56 more

The failing line of code is:
if (ctList != null && ctList.size() == 1) {
            ct = ctList.get(0).toString();  // <--- here

The reason it fails is that copyFromRequest(...) will create a singleton list and wrap the request's content-type value in it.  If the content-type from the request is null, then ctList will be a singleton list with a null value in it, so the call to toString() will be on a null value.

Instead, the code should be:
if (ctList != null && ctList.size() == 1 && ctList.get(0) != null) {
            ct = ctList.get(0).toString(); 
...

This ensures that a default content type of text/xml is returned when no content-type is specified in the request -- or whatever was specified in the Message.

This approach is preferable to just setting ctList (via the headers.get(Message.CONTENT_TYPE) field) to null because other places in the code depend on that list to be non-null.

I have a patch and test case to be delivered shortly.



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