What is a NullReferenceException, and how do I fix

Question

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I have some code and when it executes, it throws a NullReferenceException, saying:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

What does this mean, and what can I do to fix this error?

Answer 1

Simon Mourier gave this example:

object o = null;
DateTime d = (DateTime)o;  // NullReferenceException

where an unboxing conversion (cast) from object (or from one of the classes System.ValueType or System.Enum, or from an interface type) to a value type (other than Nullable<>) in itself gives the NullReferenceException.

In the other direction, a boxing conversion from a Nullable<> which has HasValue equal to false to a reference type, can give a null reference which can then later lead to a NullReferenceException. The classic example is:

DateTime? d = null;
var s = d.ToString();  // OK, no exception (no boxing), returns ""
var t = d.GetType();   // Bang! d is boxed, NullReferenceException

Sometimes the boxing happens in another way. For example with this non-generic extension method:

public static void MyExtension(this object x)
{
  x.ToString();
}

the following code will be problematic:

DateTime? d = null;
d.MyExtension();  // Leads to boxing, NullReferenceException occurs inside the body of the called method, not here.

These cases arise because of the special rules the runtime uses when boxing Nullable<> instances.

Answer 2

You can fix NullReferenceException in a clean way using Null-conditional Operators in c#6 and write less code to handle null checks.

It's used to test for null before performing a member access (?.) or index (?[) operation.

Example

  var name = p?.Spouse?.FirstName;

is equivalent to:

    if (p != null)
    {
        if (p.Spouse != null)
        {
            name = p.Spouse.FirstName;
        }
    }

The result is that the name will be null when p is null or when p.Spouse is null.

Otherwise, the variable name will be assigned the value of the p.Spouse.FirstName.

For More details : Null-conditional Operators

Answer 3

It means your code used an object reference variable that was set to null (i.e. it did not reference an actual object instance).

To prevent the error, objects that could be null should be tested for null before being used.

if (myvar != null)
{
    // Go ahead and use myvar
    myvar.property = ...
}
else
{
    // Whoops! myvar is null and cannot be used without first
    // assigning it to an instance reference
    // Attempting to use myvar here will result in NullReferenceException
}

Answer 4

What can you do about it?

There is a lot of good answers here explaining what a null reference is and how to debug it. But there is very little on how to prevent the issue or at least make it easier to catch.

Check arguments

For example, methods can check the different arguments to see if they are null and throw an ArgumentNullException, an exception obviously created for this exact purpose.

The constructor for the ArgumentNullException even takes the name of the parameter and a message as arguments so you can tell the developer exactly what the problem is.

public void DoSomething(MyObject obj) {
    if(obj == null) 
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("obj", "Need a reference to obj.");
    }
}

Use Tools

There are also several libraries that can help. "Resharper" for example can provide you with warnings while you are writing code, especially if you use their attribute: NotNullAttribute

There's "Microsoft Code Contracts" where you use syntax like Contract.Requires(obj != null) which gives you runtime and compile checking: Introducing Code Contracts.

There's also "PostSharp" which will allow you to just use attributes like this:

public void DoSometing([NotNull] obj)

By doing that and making PostSharp part of your build process obj will be checked for null at runtime. See: PostSharp null check

Plain Code Solution

Or you can always code your own approach using plain old code. For example here is a struct that you can use to catch null references. It's modeled after the same concept as Nullable<T>:

[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCode]
public struct NotNull<T> where T: class
{
    private T _value;

    public T Value
    {
        get
        {
            if (_value == null)
            {
                throw new Exception("null value not allowed");
            }

            return _value;
        }
        set
        {
            if (value == null)
            {
                throw new Exception("null value not allowed.");
            }

            _value = value;
        }
    }

    public static implicit operator T(NotNull<T> notNullValue)
    {
        return notNullValue.Value;
    }

    public static implicit operator NotNull<T>(T value)
    {
        return new NotNull<T> { Value = value };
    }
}

You would use very similar to the same way you would use Nullable<T>, except with the goal of accomplishing exactly the opposite - to not allow null. Here are some examples:

NotNull<Person> person = null; // throws exception
NotNull<Person> person = new Person(); // OK
NotNull<Person> person = GetPerson(); // throws exception if GetPerson() returns null

NotNull<T> is implicitly cast to and from T so you can use it just about anywhere you need it. For example, you can pass a Person object to a method that takes a NotNull<Person>:

Person person = new Person { Name = "John" };
WriteName(person);

public static void WriteName(NotNull<Person> person)
{
    Console.WriteLine(person.Value.Name);
}

As you can see above as with nullable you would access the underlying value through the Value property. Alternatively, you can use an explicit or implicit cast, you can see an example with the return value below:

Person person = GetPerson();

public static NotNull<Person> GetPerson()
{
    return new Person { Name = "John" };
}

Or you can even use it when the method just returns T (in this case Person) by doing a cast. For example, the following code would just like the code above:

Person person = (NotNull<Person>)GetPerson();

public static Person GetPerson()
{
    return new Person { Name = "John" };
}

Combine with Extension

Combine NotNull<T> with an extension method and you can cover even more situations. Here is an example of what the extension method can look like:

[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCode]
public static class NotNullExtension
{
    public static T NotNull<T>(this T @this) where T: class
    {
        if (@this == null)
        {
            throw new Exception("null value not allowed");
        }

        return @this;
    }
}

And here is an example of how it could be used:

var person = GetPerson().NotNull();

GitHub

For your reference I made the code above available on GitHub, you can find it at:

https://github.com/luisperezphd/NotNull

Related Language Feature

C# 6.0 introduced the "null-conditional operator" that helps with this a little. With this feature, you can reference nested objects and if any one of them is null the whole expression returns null.

This reduces the number of null checks you have to do in some cases. The syntax is to put a question mark before each dot. Take the following code for example:

var address = country?.State?.County?.City;

Imagine that country is an object of type Country that has a property called State and so on. If country, State, County, or City is null then address will benull. Therefore you only have to check whetheraddressisnull`.

It's a great feature, but it gives you less information. It doesn't make it obvious which of the 4 is null.

Built-in like Nullable?

C# has a nice shorthand for Nullable<T>, you can make something nullable by putting a question mark after the type like so int?.

It would be nice if C# had something like the NotNull<T> struct above and had a similar shorthand, maybe the exclamation point (!) so that you could write something like: public void WriteName(Person! person).

Answer 5

TL;DR: Try using Html.Partial instead of Renderpage

---

I was getting Object reference not set to an instance of an object when I tried to render a View within a View by sending it a Model, like this:

@{
    MyEntity M = new MyEntity();
}
@RenderPage("_MyOtherView.cshtml", M); // error in _MyOtherView, the Model was Null

Debugging showed the model was Null inside MyOtherView. Until I changed it to:

@{
    MyEntity M = new MyEntity();
}
@Html.Partial("_MyOtherView.cshtml", M);

And it worked.

Furthermore, the reason I didn't have Html.Partial to begin with was because Visual Studio sometimes throws error-looking squiggly lines under Html.Partial if it's inside a differently constructed foreach loop, even though it's not really an error:

@inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Entity Index";
    List<MyEntity> MyEntities = new List<MyEntity>();
    MyEntities.Add(new MyEntity());
    MyEntities.Add(new MyEntity());
    MyEntities.Add(new MyEntity());
}
<div>
    @{
        foreach(var M in MyEntities)
        {
            // Squiggly lines below. Hovering says: cannot convert method group 'partial' to non-delegate type Object, did you intend to envoke the Method?
            @Html.Partial("MyOtherView.cshtml");
        }
    }
</div>

But I was able to run the application with no problems with this "error". I was able to get rid of the error by changing the structure of the foreach loop to look like this:

@foreach(var M in MyEntities){
    ...
}

Although I have a feeling it was because Visual Studio was misreading the ampersands and brackets.

Answer 6

I have a different perspective to answering this. This sort of answers "what else can I do to avoid it?"

When working across different layers, for example in an MVC application, a controller needs services to call business operations. In such scenarios Dependency Injection Container can be used to initialize the services to avoid the NullReferenceException. So that means you don't need to worry about checking for null and just call the services from the controller as though they will always to available (and initialized) as either a singleton or a prototype.

public class MyController
{
    private ServiceA serviceA;
    private ServiceB serviceB;

    public MyController(ServiceA serviceA, ServiceB serviceB)
    {
        this.serviceA = serviceA;
        this.serviceB = serviceB;
    }

    public void MyMethod()
    {
        // We don't need to check null because the dependency injection container 
        // injects it, provided you took care of bootstrapping it.
        var someObject = serviceA.DoThis();
    }
}