Spring Social applicationURL setup exception - spring-social

Question

For Spring Social version 1.1.0.RELEASE, I need to set up the applicationUrl for the ProviderSignInController, as my application (a Tomcat app) is hosted behind a proxy (Apache web server). According the Spring Social document, I set it up as below:
<bean id="providerSignInController"
class="org.springframework.social.connect.web.ProviderSignInController">
<property name="signInUrl" value="/accounts/login" />
<property name="signUpUrl" value="/accounts/signup" />
<property name="postSignInUrl" value="/accounts/profile" />
<property name="applicationUrl" value="${applicationUrl}" />
</bean>
However, when deploying the application, I get an exception in Tomcat catalina.out saying:
PropertyAccessException 1:
org.springframework.beans.MethodInvocationException: Property
'applicationUrl' threw exception; nested exception is
java.lang.NullPointerException>org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException:
Error creating bean with name
'org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping#0'
defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml]:
Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating
bean with name 'providerSignInController' defined in ServletContext
resource [/WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml]: Error setting property values;
nested exception is
org.springframework.beans.PropertyBatchUpdateException; nested
PropertyAccessExceptions (1) are:
PropertyAccessException 1:
org.springframework.beans.MethodInvocationException: Property
'applicationUrl' threw exception; nested exception is
java.lang.NullPointerException
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:527)
Any suggestions please? Thanks.

Answer 1

It should be a bug with class ProviderSignInController in Spring Social version 1.1.0.RELEASE. In class ProviderSignInController, connectSupport is created after properties being set:
public void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception {
this.connectSupport = new ConnectSupport(sessionStrategy);
this.connectSupport.setUseAuthenticateUrl(true);
};
Therefore when method setApplicationUrl is invoked, connectSupport is still null.
Now when I configure it in the way shown below, it works. Or if I revert to version 1.0.3.RELEASE, it works fine too.
<bean id="providerSignInController"
class="org.springframework.social.connect.web.ProviderSignInController">
<property name="signInUrl" value="/accounts/login" />
<property name="signUpUrl" value="/accounts/signup" />
<property name="postSignInUrl" value="/accounts/profile" />
</bean>
<bean
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean">
<property name="targetObject" ref="providerSignInController" />
<property name="targetMethod" value="setApplicationUrl" />
<property name="arguments">
<list>
<bean class="java.lang.String">
<constructor-arg value="${applicationUrl}" />
</bean>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
Follow-up
This problem has been resolved in Spring Social version 1.1.3.RELEASE. In class ProviderSignInController, method afterPropertiesSet has been updated to:
public void afterPropertiesSet() throws Exception {
this.connectSupport = new ConnectSupport(sessionStrategy);
this.connectSupport.setUseAuthenticateUrl(true);
if (this.applicationUrl != null) {
this.connectSupport.setApplicationUrl(applicationUrl);
}
};
As a result, the workaround of configuration given above (by the way, would not work with Spring Social version 1.1.3.RELEASE any more) can now be simplified to:
<bean id="providerSignInController"
class="org.springframework.social.connect.web.ProviderSignInController">
<property name="signInUrl" value="/accounts/login" />
<property name="signUpUrl" value="/accounts/signup" />
<property name="postSignInUrl" value="/accounts/profile" />
<property name="applicationUrl" value="${applicationUrl}" />
</bean>