org.hibernate.AssertionFailure: null id in entry (

Question

I have a hibernate and JSF2 application going to the deployment server and suddenly throwing an org.hibernate.AssertionFailure: null id in exception. I will provide the stack trace and code immediately but here are four important issues first:

1. This happens only on the deployment server (Jboss & MySql running on Windows Sever 2008.) It does not happen on my development machine (Tomcat and MySql running on Windoes 7 Pro) and also not on the staging environment (Jboss and MySql running on Linux.)

2. Researching this, it seems that people get this error when trying to insert an object. But I get the error when I'm doing a simple query. (various different queries, actually, as the error pops up on several pages randomly.)

3. The error hits only every now and then. If I do a Jboss restart it goes away, but a time later returns. Also, it's not consistent, on some clicks it's there, on others it's not. Even when it hits, when I do a simple refresh of the page it returns fine.

4. I'm using c3p0 (config below)

Any idea what's going on?

The code details:

This happens on an address object. Here's the full hbm:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-mapping PUBLIC
"-//Hibernate/Hibernate Mapping DTD 3.0//EN"
"http://hibernate.sourceforge.net/hibernate-mapping-3.0.dtd">
<hibernate-mapping package="com.idex.auctions.model">
<class name="Address" table="address" lazy="true">
  <id name="addressID" column="AddressID">
        <generator class="native"/>            
  </id>

  <property name="street" column="street"/> 
  <property name="city" column="city"/> 
  <property name="zip" column="zip"/> 
  <property name="state" column="state"/> 
  <property name="region" column="region"/> 
  <property name="country" column="country"/> 

  <many-to-one name="user" 
       class="com.idex.auctions.model.User" 
       column="userid" 
       unique="true" 
       cascade="save-update"/>
 </class> 
</hibernate-mapping>

The Java class is straight forward:

public class Address implements Serializable {
private static final long serialVersionUID = 7485582614444496906L;

private long addressID;
private String street;
private String city;
private String zip;
private String state;
private String region;
private String country;
private User user;

public Address() {

}
public long getAddressID() {
    return addressID;
}
public void setAddressID(long addressID) {
    this.addressID = addressID;
}
public String getStreet() {
    return street;
}
public void setStreet(String street) {
    this.street = street;
}
public String getCity() {
    return city;
}
public void setCity(String city) {
    this.city = city;
}
public String getZip() {
    return zip;
}
public void setZip(String zip) {
    this.zip = zip;
}
public String getState() {
    return state;
}
public void setState(String state) {
    this.state = state;
}
public String getRegion() {
    return region;
}
public void setRegion(String region) {
    this.region = region;
}
public String getCountry() {
    return country;
}
public void setCountry(String country) {
    this.country = country;
}
public User getUser() {
    return user;
}
public void setUser(User user) {
    this.user = user;
}

}

The c3p0 configuration:

<property name="hibernate.c3p0.acquire_increment">1</property> 
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.idle_test_period">1000</property> 
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.max_size">20</property>  
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.min_size">5</property>
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.timeout">1800</property>
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.max_statements">0</property>
<property name="connection.provider_class">org.hibernate.connection.C3P0ConnectionProvider</property>

The versions used are

hibernate3.jar

c3p0-0.9.1.2.jar

myfaces-api-2.1.4.jar

myfaces-impl-2.1.4.jar

mysql-connector-java-5.1.20-bin.jar

The full stacktrace

org.hibernate.AssertionFailure: null id in com.idex.auctions.model.Address entry 
    (don't flush the Session after an exception occurs)
org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultFlushEntityEventListener.checkId(
                                          DefaultFlushEntityEventListener.java:78)
org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultFlushEntityEventListener.getValues(
                                          DefaultFlushEntityEventListener.java:187)
org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultFlushEntityEventListener.onFlushEntity(
                                          DefaultFlushEntityEventListener.java:143)
org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractFlushingEventListener.flushEntities(
                                          AbstractFlushingEventListener.java:219)
org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractFlushingEventListener.flushEverythingToExecutions(
                                          AbstractFlushingEventListener.java:99)
org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultAutoFlushEventListener.onAutoFlush(
                                          DefaultAutoFlushEventListener.java:58)
org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.autoFlushIfRequired(SessionImpl.java:997)
org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.list(SessionImpl.java:1142)
org.hibernate.impl.QueryImpl.list(QueryImpl.java:102)
com.idex.auctions.manager.DatabaseManager.getAllObjects(DatabaseManager.java:464)
com.idex.auctions.ui.NavBean.gotoHome(NavBean.java:40)
sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor350.invoke(Unknown Source)
sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
javax.el.BeanELResolver.invokeMethod(BeanELResolver.java:735)
javax.el.BeanELResolver.invoke(BeanELResolver.java:467)
javax.el.CompositeELResolver.invoke(CompositeELResolver.java:246)
org.apache.el.parser.AstValue.getValue(AstValue.java:159)
org.apache.el.ValueExpressionImpl.getValue(ValueExpressionImpl.java:189)
org.apache.myfaces.view.facelets.el.ContextAwareTagValueExpression.getValue(
                                          ContextAwareTagValueExpression.java:96)
javax.faces.component._DeltaStateHelper.eval(_DeltaStateHelper.java:246)
javax.faces.component.UIOutcomeTarget.getOutcome(UIOutcomeTarget.java:50)
org.apache.myfaces.shared.renderkit.html.HtmlRendererUtils.getOutcomeTargetHref(
                                          HtmlRendererUtils.java:1542)
org.apache.myfaces.shared.renderkit.html.HtmlLinkRendererBase.renderOutcomeLinkStart(
                                          HtmlLinkRendererBase.java:908)
org.apache.myfaces.shared.renderkit.html.HtmlLinkRendererBase.encodeBegin(
                                          HtmlLinkRendererBase.java:143)
javax.faces.component.UIComponentBase.encodeBegin(UIComponentBase.java:502)
javax.faces.component.UIComponent.encodeAll(UIComponent.java:744)
javax.faces.component.UIComponent.encodeAll(UIComponent.java:758)
javax.faces.component.UIComponent.encodeAll(UIComponent.java:758)
org.apache.myfaces.view.facelets.FaceletViewDeclarationLanguage.renderView(
                                    FaceletViewDeclarationLanguage.java:1900)
org.apache.myfaces.application.ViewHandlerImpl.renderView(ViewHandlerImpl.java:285)
com.ocpsoft.pretty.faces.application.PrettyViewHandler.renderView(
                                    PrettyViewHandler.java:163)
javax.faces.application.ViewHandlerWrapper.renderView(ViewHandlerWrapper.java:59)
org.apache.myfaces.tomahawk.application.ResourceViewHandlerWrapper.renderView(
                                    ResourceViewHandlerWrapper.java:93)
com.idex.auctions.ui.CustomViewHandler.renderView(CustomViewHandler.java:98)
org.apache.myfaces.lifecycle.RenderResponseExecutor.execute(RenderResponseExecutor.java:115)
org.apache.myfaces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.render(LifecycleImpl.java:241)
javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:199)
com.ocpsoft.pretty.PrettyFilter.doFilter(PrettyFilter.java:126)
com.ocpsoft.pretty.PrettyFilter.doFilter(PrettyFilter.java:118)

Answer 1

OK, I continued researching based among other things on other answers in this thread. But in the end, since we were up against a production deadline, I had to choose the emergency rout. So instead of figuring out hibernate I did these two things:

1. Removed a jQuery library I was using to grab focus on one of the forms. I did this because I read somewhere that this type of bug may happen due to a form posting a null value -- causing the null id down the line. I suspected the jQuery library may not sit well with PrimeFaces, and cause some form to malfunction. Just a hunch.

2. I killed the hibernate implemented relationship I had between user and address. (just one required, not one to many) and wrote the code myself when needed. Luckily it only affected one page significantly, so it wasn't much work.

The bottom line: we went live and the application has been running for several days without any errors. So this solution may not be pretty -- and I'm not proud of myself -- but I have a running app and a happy client.

Answer 2

I would bet for a concurrency issue but it may occur at different levels:

• a hibernate session may be shared between different users if the classical "open session in view" pattern is not properly implemented
• an entity is shared between two user sessions because of improper hibernate cache settings
• a JDBC connection is shared between two different hibernate session (less likely)

Apart from these potential sources of troubles, I would remove c3p0 (maybe just rumors...) as your stack already provides DataSource with connection pooling integrated with the transaction manager.

Answer 3

You are probably hitting some Hibernate bug. (I'd recommend upgrading to at least Hibernate 3.3.2.GA.)

Meanwhile, Hibernate does better when your ID is nullable so that Hibernate can always tell the difference between a new object that has not yet been persisted to the database and one that's already in the database. Changing the type of addressID from long to Long will probably work around the problem.

The stack trace you provided shows that you are seeing the problem on a query because your query is forcing buffered writes to be flushed to the database before the query is executed and that write is failing, probably with the same insert problem other people are seeing.

Answer 4

Changing the generator class:

<generator class="identity" />

to

<generator class="assigned" />

Answer 5

Sometimes this happens when length of string is greater than that allowed by DB.

DataIntegrityViolationException translates to this exception which is a weird behavior by hibernate.

So if you have Column annotation on the String field of the entity with length specified and the actual value is greater than that length, above exception is thrown.

Ref: https://developer.jboss.org/thread/186341?_sscc=t

Answer 6

This is nothing to do with the Query that is being executed. This just triggers the flush. At this point Hibernate is trying to assign an identifier to the entity and seems to have failed for some reason.

Could you try changing the generator class:

<generator class="identity"/>

see if that makes a difference. Also have you made sure that the database you have deployed has the correct auto-incrementing column set up on the table?

It sounds like your issue is similar to this one.