java.lang.NullPointerException - at com.qa.factory.factory.DriverFactory.init_driver(DriverFactory.java:26)

Question

public class DriverFactory {

    public WebDriver driver;

    public static ThreadLocal<WebDriver> tlDriver = new ThreadLocal<>();

    /**
     * This method is used to initialize the threadlocal driver on the basis of given
     * browser
     *
     * @param browser
     * @return this will return tldriver.
     */
    public WebDriver init_driver(String browser) {

        System.out.println("browser value is: " + browser);

        if (browser.equals("chrome")) {
            WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
            tlDriver.set(new ChromeDriver());
        } else if (browser.equals("firefox")) {
            WebDriverManager.firefoxdriver().setup();
            tlDriver.set(new FirefoxDriver());
        } else if (browser.equals("safari")) {
            tlDriver.set(new SafariDriver());
        } else {
            System.out.println("Please pass the correct browser value: " + browser);
        }

        getDriver().manage().deleteAllCookies();
        getDriver().manage().window().maximize();
        return getDriver();

    }

    /**
     * this is used to get the driver with ThreadLocal
     *
     * @return
     */
    public static synchronized WebDriver getDriver() {
        return tlDriver.get();
    }
}

Answer 1

Check your property file, you may have not set the below key-value

#Browser config:
browser = chrome

Property file location:

You may have the below code in your ApplicationHooks class. browserName variable seems to be null. Hence you are getting NPE when you call the method driverFactory.init_driver

    public void launchBrowser() {
        String browserName = prop.getProperty("browser");
        driverFactory = new DriverFactory();
        driver = driverFactory.init_driver(browserName);
        driver.get(prop.getProperty("appURL"));
        
    }

Note- I happened to have the same framework(source code), hence am very particularly specifying the other parts of the code which you have not even mentioned in your question.

Answer 2

We generally tend to encounter this issue when we used to test web applications during our outsourced software testing project.

I have one approach to solving the problem you are facing. Sharing the code snippet in below example:

    import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
    import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;

    public class ChromeDriverThreadLocal {
    private static final String CHROME_DRIVER_PATH = "/path/to/chromedriver";
    private static final ThreadLocal<WebDriver> driver = new ThreadLocal<>();
    public static WebDriver getDriver() {
        if (driver.get() == null) {
            System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", CHROME_DRIVER_PATH);
            driver.set(new ChromeDriver());
        }
        return driver.get();
    }
}

In this example, each thread will have its own instance of ChromeDriver that is accessible through the getDriver() method. This ensures that the driver instance is thread-safe and can be used by multiple threads without conflicting with each other. Similarly, you can also add other browser capabilities as well.