Left side (xx) of 'y' operation has null value. Operation not possible

Left side (xx) of 'y' operation has null value. Operation not possible

I have been seeing a lot of messages like this in my dotCMS logs:

[18/10/10 02:19:45:045 EST] ERROR app.VelocityEngine: Left side ($queryType) of '==' operation has null value. Operation not possible. /usr/local/dotcms/webap
ps/../dotCMS/assets/1/4/14777.vtl [line 5, column 25]

This results from code such as:

#if ($queryType == "$expectedValue" )

I thought this was strange because the macro this code belonged to wasn't even being executed - so the variable never gets a value anyway. It turns out the fix is to quote the variable, as per below.

#if ("$queryType" == "$expectedValue" )

That's fine for string values, but won't stop an error on anything involved in a numerical operation.

#if ($totalResults > 0 )

The above code results in this error:

[18/10/10 02:46:43:043 EST] ERROR app.VelocityEngine: Left side ($totalResults) of '>' operation has null value. Operation not possible. /usr/local/dotcms/webap
ps/../dotCMS/assets/1/4/14777.vtl [line 1, column 24]

The fix is to make sure it is a number under any circumstances.

#if (!$UtilMethods.isSet($totalResults))
   #set($totalResults = 0)
#end
#if ($totalResults > 0 )

It seems Velocity is a bit like bash or DOS shell scripts in this respect; unless you quote a variable name, it will see null as the value and output an error.

My dotCMS notes.

http://robertmarkbramprogrammer.blogspot.com/2010/10/left-side-xx-of-y-operation-has-null.html