Protected Page problem

[Con Lu]

Gidday,
I've been going through Marty Hall's CoreServlets book which has an example of a protected page servlet, which uses a properties file for checking the passwords.
I can't seem to get the servlet to work.
I have done the following:-
1) Created the properties file using the book's program PasswordBuilder.java
2) This has created a properties file in the following directory as shown below:-
c:\tomcat\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\classes\coreservlets\passwords.properties
3) I then add the following to the the web.xml file located in the WEB-INF directory as follows:-
<servlet>
<servlet-name>
ProPage
</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
coreservlets.ProtectedPage
</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>
passwordFile
</param-name>
<param-value>
"passwords.properties"
</param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>
4) Placed the ProtectedPage.class file into the directory above
5) Started up Tomcat server
6) Started up browser and gone to address:-
http://localhost/servlet/coreservlets/ProtectedPage
7) The tomcat error page comes up with an error trace which points to the third code line in ProtectedPage.java shown below:-
String passwordFile = config.getInitParameter("passwordFile");
Properties passwords = new Properties();
passwords.load(new FileInputStream(passwordFile));
What is the matter?
Where should the passwords.properties file be placed?
How should this be entered in the web.xml file?
Any help would be much appreciated!
Regards

[chanoch wiggers]

my guess is that you are getting IOException; File cannot be found? we need to see the stack trace to give you a confident answer.

[Frank Carver]

It looks like you have two problems.
1. you don't need the " characters around the name of the properties file in the web.xml, remove them.
2. you should put the properties file in the WEB-INF/classes directory itself, not in a subdirectory.
Try that and let us know how you get on.

[Con Lu]

Thanks for the info so far.
I have taken the " " out, and placed the properties file in the classes directory as suggested.
Unfortunately I seem to be getting a NullPointerException as shown in the following stack trace:-Exception report
message Internal Server Error
description The server encountered an internal error (Internal Server Error) that prevented it from fulfilling this request.
exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.io.File.(File.java:180)
at java.io.FileInputStream.(FileInputStream.java:66)
at coreservlets.ProtectedPage.init(ProtectedPage.java:32)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.load(StandardWrapper.java:852)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.allocate(StandardWrapper.java:615)
at org.apache.catalina.servlets.InvokerServlet.serveRequest(InvokerServlet.java:396)
at org.apache.catalina.servlets.InvokerServlet.doGet(InvokerServlet.java:180)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:740)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:853)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:247)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:193)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:243)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:566)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:472)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:943)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:201)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:566)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.CertificatesValve.invoke(CertificatesValve.java:246)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:564)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:472)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:943)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.invoke(StandardContext.java:2344)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:164)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:566)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorDispatcherValve.invoke(ErrorDispatcherValve.java:170)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:564)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:170)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:564)
at org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:462)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:564)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:472)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:943)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:163)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invokeNext(StandardPipeline.java:566)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:472)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:943)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.http.HttpProcessor.process(HttpProcessor.java:1011)
at org.apache.catalina.connector.http.HttpProcessor.run(HttpProcessor.java:1106)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)
Any ideas?
Thanks,

[William Brogden]

Looking at line 180 in File I see that is what happens when you pass a null instead of a file name. I bet your init method is not doing what you think it is.
Bill