Fix NPE when Spring messaging handler is invoked with a null message (quick fix) by dougqh · Pull Request #12690 · DataDog/dd-trace-java

dougqh · 2026-09-29T19:16:42Z

What Does This Do

Fixes a NullPointerException in the Spring messaging instrumentation when a handler is invoked with a null message.

SpringMessageHandlerInstrumentation.ContextPropagationAdvice now skips context extraction when the Message argument is null (message != null && activeSpan() == null), so no extract/attach work is done for it.
SpringMessageExtractAdapter.forEachKey now returns early for a null carrier instead of dereferencing it.
Adds SpringMessageExtractAdapterTest (JUnit 5): null message, message without headers, and key normalization / non-string headers. The null-message case fails without the fix.

Motivation

Instrumentation telemetry shows this NPE at SpringMessageExtractAdapter.forEachKey:37 (carrier.getHeaders()), reported as "Failed to handle exception in instrumentation for org.springframework.messaging.handler.invocation.InvocableHandlerMethod - SpringMessageHandlerInstrumentation$ContextPropagationAdvice". It is steady at about 2-2.8k events an hour (~46k a day), from many services on 1.65 and 1.66. Each report aggregates repeats (one sample had count: 1673), so the real number of exceptions thrown is higher.

There is nothing to extract from a null message, so no tracing data is lost. The cost is an exception thrown and reported on every such invocation.

Additional Notes

History: the unguarded dereference of the carrier dates from the adapter's original version (2023); Avoid NPE when inspecting spring messaging headers #10254 (Dec 2025) guarded a null getHeaders() result but not a null carrier. The failure became its own reported advice when Split tracing and context tracking in server and messaging integrations #10767 (v1.61.0) split out ContextPropagationAdvice. I could not tell from telemetry which Spring code path passes a null message.
The exit advice already null-checks the scope (if (scope != null) scope.close()), so a skipped extraction is safe.
The two null checks are intentional: the advice guard avoids the work, and the adapter guard keeps the getter safe for any other caller. Happy to drop the adapter one if reviewers prefer the fix in one place.
No test covers the advice path itself (null message with no active span); advice classes are awkward to unit test.

Contributor Checklist

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Once approved, use merge queue to merge the PR

Jira ticket: N/A

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

ContextPropagationAdvice extracted context from the handler's message argument without a null check, and SpringMessageExtractAdapter dereferenced its carrier unguarded, so a null message threw an NPE on every invocation that had no active span. Skip extraction when the message is null and make the adapter tolerate a null carrier. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

datadog-prod-us1-6

More details

Both the advice-level and adapter-level guards make null messages a safe no-op while preserving context extraction for non-null messages.

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datadog-prod-us1-6 · 2026-09-29T19:36:26Z

🎯 Code Coverage (details)
• Patch Coverage: 100.00%
• Overall Coverage: 68.82% (+9.45%)

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🔗 Commit SHA: c3d0a05 | Docs | Give us feedback!}

dd-octo-sts · 2026-09-29T19:44:20Z

🟢 Java Benchmark SLOs — All performance SLOs passed

Suite	Status
Startup	🟢 pass

SLO thresholds are defined here based on automatically generated metrics. A warning is raised when results are within 5% of the threshold.

PR vs. master results

Scenario	Candidate	master	Δ (95% CI of mean)
startup:insecure-bank:iast:Agent	14.88 s	14.71 s	[+0.2%; +2.0%] (maybe worse)
startup:insecure-bank:tracing:Agent	13.61 s	13.65 s	[-1.0%; +0.4%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:appsec:Agent	17.17 s	17.10 s	[-0.2%; +1.0%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:iast:Agent	16.90 s	17.13 s	[-2.1%; -0.6%] (maybe better)
startup:petclinic:profiling:Agent	16.73 s	16.53 s	[+0.2%; +2.2%] (maybe worse)
startup:petclinic:sca:Agent	16.59 s	16.91 s	[-6.5%; +2.6%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:tracing:Agent	16.15 s	16.19 s	[-1.1%; +0.7%] (no difference)

Commit: c3d0a057 · CI Pipeline · Benchmarking Platform UI

Load and DaCapo benchmarks can be triggered manually in the GitLab pipeline. Results will appear in the Benchmarking Platform UI after completion.

dougqh · 2026-10-02T01:17:40Z

@codex review

chatgpt-codex-connector · 2026-10-02T01:20:39Z

Codex Review: Didn't find any major issues. Swish!

Reviewed commit: d5e91fe108

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amarziali

thanks

jordan-wong

LGTM thanks for this

dd-octo-sts · 2026-10-07T12:30:05Z

/merge

gh-worker-devflow-routing-ef8351 · 2026-10-07T12:30:09Z

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2026-10-07 13:25:02 UTC ❌ MergeQueue: The build pipeline contains failing jobs for this merge request

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Since those jobs are not marked as being allowed to fail, the pipeline will most likely fail.
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dd-octo-sts · 2026-10-07T19:35:36Z

/merge

gh-worker-devflow-routing-ef8351 · 2026-10-07T19:35:40Z

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2026-10-07 19:35:39 UTC ℹ️ Start processing command /merge

2026-10-07 19:35:43 UTC ℹ️ MergeQueue: pull request added to the queue

The expected merge time in master is approximately 1h (p90).

2026-10-07 20:31:15 UTC ❌ MergeQueue: The build pipeline contains failing jobs for this merge request

Build pipeline has failing jobs for e8e7685:

test_inst: [17, 5/8]

⚠️ Do NOT retry failed jobs directly (why?).

What to do next?

Investigate the failures and when ready, re-add your pull request to the queue!
If your PR checks are green, try to rebase/merge. It might be because the CI run is a bit old.
Any question, go check the FAQ.

Details

Since those jobs are not marked as being allowed to fail, the pipeline will most likely fail.
Therefore, and to allow other builds to be processed, this merge request has been rejected and the pipeline got canceled.

dd-octo-sts · 2026-10-07T21:02:19Z

/merge

gh-worker-devflow-routing-ef8351 · 2026-10-07T21:02:23Z

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2026-10-07 21:02:22 UTC ℹ️ Start processing command /merge

2026-10-07 21:02:26 UTC ℹ️ MergeQueue: pull request added to the queue

The expected merge time in master is approximately 1h (p90).

2026-10-07 21:19:08 UTC ❌ MergeQueue: The build pipeline contains failing jobs for this merge request

Build pipeline has failing jobs for 380da2e:

check_build_src

⚠️ Do NOT retry failed jobs directly (why?).

What to do next?

Investigate the failures and when ready, re-add your pull request to the queue!
If your PR checks are green, try to rebase/merge. It might be because the CI run is a bit old.
Any question, go check the FAQ.

Details

Since those jobs are not marked as being allowed to fail, the pipeline will most likely fail.
Therefore, and to allow other builds to be processed, this merge request has been rejected and the pipeline got canceled.

dd-octo-sts · 2026-10-07T21:42:24Z

/merge

gh-worker-devflow-routing-ef8351 · 2026-10-07T21:42:28Z

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2026-10-07 21:42:28 UTC ℹ️ Start processing command /merge

2026-10-07 21:42:32 UTC ℹ️ MergeQueue: pull request added to the queue

The expected merge time in master is approximately 1h (p90).

2026-10-07 21:58:10 UTC ❌ MergeQueue: The build pipeline contains failing jobs for this merge request

Build pipeline has failing jobs for db683de:

check_build_src

⚠️ Do NOT retry failed jobs directly (why?).

What to do next?

Investigate the failures and when ready, re-add your pull request to the queue!
If your PR checks are green, try to rebase/merge. It might be because the CI run is a bit old.
Any question, go check the FAQ.

Details

Since those jobs are not marked as being allowed to fail, the pipeline will most likely fail.
Therefore, and to allow other builds to be processed, this merge request has been rejected and the pipeline got canceled.

dd-octo-sts · 2026-10-08T12:58:06Z

/merge

gh-worker-devflow-routing-ef8351 · 2026-10-08T12:58:10Z

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2026-10-08 12:58:10 UTC ℹ️ Start processing command /merge

2026-10-08 12:58:14 UTC ℹ️ MergeQueue: pull request added to the queue

The expected merge time in master is approximately 1h (p90).

2026-10-08 14:38:09 UTC ℹ️ MergeQueue: This merge request was merged

dougqh added type: bug fix Bug fix tag: no release notes Changes to exclude from release notes inst: spring Spring instrumentation tag: ai generated Largely based on code generated by an AI or LLM labels Sep 29, 2026

dougqh changed the title ~~Fix NPE when Spring messaging handler is invoked with a null message~~ Fix NPE when Spring messaging handler is invoked with a null message (quick fix) Sep 29, 2026

dougqh marked this pull request as ready for review September 29, 2026 19:17

dougqh requested a review from a team as a code owner September 29, 2026 19:17

dougqh requested review from jordan-wong and removed request for a team September 29, 2026 19:17

datadog-prod-us1-6 Bot reviewed Sep 29, 2026

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amarziali approved these changes Oct 2, 2026

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Merge branch 'master' into dougqh/spring-messaging-null-message

c3d0a05

jordan-wong approved these changes Oct 7, 2026

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dougqh added this pull request to the merge queue Oct 7, 2026

github-merge-queue Bot removed this pull request from the merge queue due to failed status checks Oct 7, 2026

dougqh added this pull request to the merge queue Oct 7, 2026

github-merge-queue Bot removed this pull request from the merge queue due to failed status checks Oct 7, 2026

dougqh added this pull request to the merge queue Oct 7, 2026

github-merge-queue Bot removed this pull request from the merge queue due to failed status checks Oct 7, 2026

dougqh added this pull request to the merge queue Oct 7, 2026

github-merge-queue Bot removed this pull request from the merge queue due to failed status checks Oct 7, 2026

dougqh added this pull request to the merge queue Oct 8, 2026

github-merge-queue Bot removed this pull request from the merge queue due to failed status checks Oct 8, 2026

gh-worker-dd-mergequeue-cf854d Bot merged commit 14f69f0 into master Oct 8, 2026
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gh-worker-dd-mergequeue-cf854d Bot deleted the dougqh/spring-messaging-null-message branch October 8, 2026 14:38

github-actions Bot added this to the 1.68.0 milestone Oct 8, 2026

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