I would still find the real reason and fix it correctly. One easy trick if you already know it's throwing NPE is to debug with Exception breakpoint set to break

I would still find the real reason and fix it correctly. One easy trick if you already know it's throwing NPE is to debug with Exception breakpoint set to break on NPE. You will find the exact point it fails and you will know how to fix it. BTW I'm pretty frustrated when I do this to find NPE in my code only to find that spring or apache libraries throw and catch NPEs all over the place :) Don't add to the mess :)