flowable/flowable-engine · error · ActivitiIllegalArgumentException

executionId is null

Error message

executionId is null

What it means

FindActiveActivityIdsCmd returns the ids of currently active activities for an execution. It requires a non-null executionId; without it no execution can be located, so ActivitiIllegalArgumentException is thrown before the lookup.

Solutions

1. Pass a non-null executionId obtained from ExecutionEntity.getId() or startProcessInstance results
2. Verify the process instance is still running and its executions not yet ended
3. Guard the call site with a null check on the executionId variable

Example fix

// before
List<String> ids = runtimeService.getActiveActivityIds(executionId);
// after
if (executionId != null) {
    List<String> ids = runtimeService.getActiveActivityIds(executionId);
}

if (executionId == null) { throw new IllegalArgumentException("executionId required"); }

boolean hasExecutionId(String id) { return id != null && !id.isEmpty(); }

try { runtimeService.getActiveActivityIds(executionId); } catch (ActivitiIllegalArgumentException e) { LOGGER.error("Missing executionId", e); }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling RuntimeService.getActiveActivityIds(executionId) with a null execution id, e.g. when the execution variable was never set or a previous step returned null.

Common situations: Custom code tracking execution state after a process instance terminated (execution references gone); forgetting to store the execution id returned from startProcessInstanceByX; passing a variable that failed to initialize.

Related errors

• comment is null
• Deployment id is null
• event is null
• executionId is null
• Invalid case definition id : null

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/79f3350cc0f96b31. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at modules/flowable5-engine/src/main/java/org/activiti/engine/impl/cmd/FindActiveActivityIdsCmd.java:41

import org.activiti.engine.impl.persistence.entity.ExecutionEntity;
import org.activiti.engine.runtime.Execution;

/**
 * @author Tom Baeyens
 */
public class FindActiveActivityIdsCmd implements Command<List<String>>, Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    protected String executionId;

    public FindActiveActivityIdsCmd(String executionId) {
        this.executionId = executionId;
    }

    @Override
    public List<String> execute(CommandContext commandContext) {
        if (executionId == null) {
            throw new ActivitiIllegalArgumentException("executionId is null");
        }

        ExecutionEntity execution = commandContext
                .getExecutionEntityManager()
                .findExecutionById(executionId);

        if (execution == null) {
            throw new ActivitiObjectNotFoundException("execution " + executionId + " doesn't exist", Execution.class);
        }

        return execution.findActiveActivityIds();
    }
}

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