"java.lang.NullPointerException" when trying to click any element in a page - selenium-chromedriver

Question

The code was running completely fine until yesterday. Now, when I am trying to run any test case, Selenium (using Java) throws java.lang.NullPointerException on the homepage itself. Below is a simple test case which is failing due to the error.
Below is my Test class which is calling the constructor of TestBase class and then, initializing the driver object. When the control goes into homepage.clickSearchLink() method, the test ends and error comes.
package com.ss.qa.testcases;
import org.testng.Assert;
import org.testng.annotations.AfterMethod;
import org.testng.annotations.BeforeMethod;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.*;
import com.ss.qa.base.TestBase;
import com.ss.qa.pages.HomePage;
import com.ss.qa.pages.SearchPage;
public class SearchPageTest extends TestBase{
HomePage homepage;
SearchPage searchpage;
SearchPageTest(){
super();
}
#BeforeMethod
public void setUp(){
initialization();
homepage = new HomePage();
searchpage = homepage.clickSearchLink();
}
#Test
public void verifyResultCount() {
int count = searchpage.countResults("a");
Assert.assertEquals(count, 15);
}
#AfterMethod
public void tearDown() {
driver.quit();
}
}
Below is my TestBase class which is calling the constructor of Test Base class and initializing the driver object
package com.ss.qa.base;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.sql.Driver;
import java.util.Properties;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import org.openqa.selenium.WebDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeOptions.*;
import org.openqa.selenium.firefox.FirefoxDriver;
import org.openqa.selenium.support.events.EventFiringWebDriver;
import com.ss.qa.util.TestUtil;
import com.ss.qa.util.WebEventListener;
public class TestBase {
public static WebDriver driver = null;
public static Properties prop;
public static EventFiringWebDriver e_driver;
public static WebEventListener eventListener;
public TestBase(){
try {
prop = new Properties();
FileInputStream ip = new FileInputStream("D:\\Users\\eclipse-
workspace\\src\\main\\java\\com\\ss\\qa\\config\\config.properties");
prop.load(ip);
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static void initialization() {
String browserName = prop.getProperty("browser");
if (browserName.equalsIgnoreCase("chrome")) {
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\\Users\\Downloads\\"chromedriver_win32\\chromedriver.exe");
driver = new ChromeDriver();
System.out.println("driver=" + driver);
}
else if (browserName.equalsIgnoreCase("FF")) {
System.setProperty("webdriver.gecko.driver", "C:\\Users\\Downloads\\geckodriver-v0.21.0-win64\\geckodriver.exe");
driver = new FirefoxDriver();
}
e_driver = new EventFiringWebDriver(driver);
eventListener = new WebEventListener();
e_driver.register(eventListener);
driver = e_driver;
driver.manage().window().maximize();
driver.manage().deleteAllCookies();
driver.manage().timeouts().pageLoadTimeout(TestUtil.PAGE_LOAD_TIMEOUT , TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(TestUtil.IMPLICIT_WAIT , TimeUnit.SECONDS);
driver.get(prop.getProperty("url"));
}
}
<!-- Method in Event Listener class which is showing in error -->
public void afterFindBy(By arg0, WebElement arg1, WebDriver arg2) {
System.out.println("Find happened on " + arg1.toString() + " Using method " + arg0.toString());
}
ERROR LOG :
[RemoteTestNG] detected TestNG version 6.11.0 Starting ChromeDriver
2.41.578737 (49da6702b16031c40d63e5618de03a32ff6c197e) on port 21677 Only local connections are allowed. log4j:WARN No appenders could be
found for logger (org.apache.http.client.protocol.RequestAddCookies).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly. log4j:WARN See
http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/faq.html#noconfig for more info.
Sep 09, 2018 9:10:58 AM org.openqa.selenium.remote.ProtocolHandshake
createSession INFO: Detected dialect: OSS driver=ChromeDriver: chrome
on XP (ac62d0828d89443b9bedefa67a824225) Inside the afterNavigateTo to
https://www.ss.com/en FAILED CONFIGURATION: #BeforeMethod setUp
java.lang.NullPointerException at
com.ss.qa.util.WebEventListener.afterFindBy(WebEventListener.java:31)
at
java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native
Method) at
java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
at
java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:564) at
org.openqa.selenium.support.events.EventFiringWebDriver$1.invoke(EventFiringWebDriver.java:81)
at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy9.afterFindBy(Unknown Source) at
org.openqa.selenium.support.events.EventFiringWebDriver.findElement(EventFiringWebDriver.java:189)
at
org.openqa.selenium.support.pagefactory.DefaultElementLocator.findElement(DefaultElementLocator.java:69)
at
org.openqa.selenium.support.pagefactory.internal.LocatingElementHandler.invoke(LocatingElementHandler.java:38)
at com.sun.proxy.$Proxy12.isDisplayed(Unknown Source) at
com.ss.qa.pages.HomePage.clickSearchLink(HomePage.java:67) at
com.ss.qa.testcases.SearchPageTest.setUp(SearchPageTest.java:25) at
java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native
Method) at
java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
at
java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:564) at
org.testng.internal.MethodInvocationHelper.invokeMethod(MethodInvocationHelper.java:108)
at
org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurationMethod(Invoker.java:523)
at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeConfigurations(Invoker.java:224)
at org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeMethod(Invoker.java:599) at
org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeTestMethod(Invoker.java:869) at
org.testng.internal.Invoker.invokeTestMethods(Invoker.java:1193) at
org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.invokeTestMethods(TestMethodWorker.java:126)
at
org.testng.internal.TestMethodWorker.run(TestMethodWorker.java:109)
at org.testng.TestRunner.privateRun(TestRunner.java:744) at
org.testng.TestRunner.run(TestRunner.java:602) at
org.testng.SuiteRunner.runTest(SuiteRunner.java:380) at
org.testng.SuiteRunner.runSequentially(SuiteRunner.java:375) at
org.testng.SuiteRunner.privateRun(SuiteRunner.java:340) at
org.testng.SuiteRunner.run(SuiteRunner.java:289) at
org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.runSuite(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:52) at
org.testng.SuiteRunnerWorker.run(SuiteRunnerWorker.java:86) at
org.testng.TestNG.runSuitesSequentially(TestNG.java:1301) at
org.testng.TestNG.runSuitesLocally(TestNG.java:1226) at
org.testng.TestNG.runSuites(TestNG.java:1144) at
org.testng.TestNG.run(TestNG.java:1115) at
org.testng.remote.AbstractRemoteTestNG.run(AbstractRemoteTestNG.java:114)
at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.initAndRun(RemoteTestNG.java:251)
at org.testng.remote.RemoteTestNG.main(RemoteTestNG.java:77)
Kindly suggest.

Answer 1

WebEventListener.java:31: keep the null check, one of the elements you are using is throwing a null pointer exception.
If you can post the printed content of the WebEventListener.java on line 31, then we can better examine the problem. To do that, change this line:
public void afterFindBy(By arg0, WebElement arg1, WebDriver arg2) {
System.out.println("Find happened on " + arg1 + " Using method " + arg0);
}

Answer 2

As per you comment " When the control goes into homepage.clickSearchLink() method, the test ends and error comes."
check whether this method "homepage.clickSearchLink()" is returning searchpage instance.
the method should be
~public Searchpage clickSearchLink(){
//click on element to get search page
//Also check whether element is present on page or not.
return new Searchpage();
}~