Pfthb

I have this in my servlet's doPost():

if(request.getParameter("mode").equals("html"))
 request.getRequestDispatcher("WEB-INF/jsp/Menu.jsp").forward(request, response);
else 
 request.getRequestDispatcher("WEB-INF/jsp/success.jsp").forward(request, response);

I test for the execution of the first statement by having an HTML page with a form as follows:

<form action="" method="post">
 Username:<br>
 <input type="text" name="user"><br>
 Password:<br>
 <input type="text" name="pass"><br><br>
 <input type="hidden" name="mode" value="html" />
 <input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

When I submit the form, the first statement (forwarding to Menu.jsp) executes correctly.
I test for the execution of the second statement by having a unit test (which I didn't write myself) that makes the post request directly, not through a form, as follows:

@Test
public void testLoginSuccess() 
 try 
 WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
 String jsonText = login(webClient, "bob3", "fred3");
 DocumentContext dc = JsonPath.parse(jsonText);
 Assert.assertEquals("success", dc.read("$['status']"));


 catch (IOException e) 
 e.printStackTrace();
 Assert.assertTrue(false);
 

The login method:

private String login(WebClient webClient, String username, String password)
 throws MalformedURLException, IOException 
 WebRequest requestSettings = new WebRequest(new URL(URL_BASE+"Login"), HttpMethod.POST);
 requestSettings.setRequestParameters(new ArrayList());
 requestSettings.getRequestParameters().add(new NameValuePair("user", username));
 requestSettings.getRequestParameters().add(new NameValuePair("pass", password));

 Page page = webClient.getPage(requestSettings);
 String jsonText = page.getWebResponse().getContentAsString();
 testLogger.log(Level.INFO, jsonText);
 return jsonText;

The test fails and gives me a FailingHttpStatusCodeException at this line inside the login method:

Page page = webClient.getPage(requestSettings);

Since I didn't write the test myself and don't fully understand its code, I can't tell why it's failing, but it's passing when I don't have the if-else in my servlet and, instead, always execute the else statement.

Thank you for any help.

My bad, I was doing

request.getParameter("mode").equals("html")

where "request.getParameter("mode")" might return null if the parameter is not set then calling .equals on the null result.

Why didn't it give me a NullPointerException in the stack trace though??