What causes "name is null" in flowable/flowable-engine?

Pass a concrete privilege name string, e.g. new GetUsersWithPrivilegeCmd("access-idm")

flowable/flowable-engine · error · FlowableIllegalArgumentException

name is null

Error message

name is null

What it means

GetUsersWithPrivilegeCmd lists all users that hold a named privilege (e.g. 'access-rest-api'). The privilege name is the lookup key, so the constructor validates it immediately and throws FlowableIllegalArgumentException when null.

Source

Thrown at modules/flowable-idm-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/idm/engine/impl/cmd/GetUsersWithPrivilegeCmd.java:36

import org.flowable.common.engine.api.FlowableIllegalArgumentException;
import org.flowable.common.engine.impl.interceptor.Command;
import org.flowable.common.engine.impl.interceptor.CommandContext;
import org.flowable.idm.api.User;
import org.flowable.idm.engine.impl.util.CommandContextUtil;

/**
 * @author Joram Barrez
 */
public class GetUsersWithPrivilegeCmd implements Command<List<User>>, Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    protected String name;

    public GetUsersWithPrivilegeCmd(String name) {
        if (name == null) {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("name is null");
        }
        this.name = name;
    }

    @Override
    public List<User> execute(CommandContext commandContext) {
        return CommandContextUtil.getUserEntityManager(commandContext).findUsersByPrivilegeId(name);
    }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to d6d39ce1c6)

Solutions

Pass a concrete privilege name string, e.g. new GetUsersWithPrivilegeCmd("access-idm")
Validate the privilege-name source (config/variable) before invoking the query
Catch FlowableIllegalArgumentException if a null name should degrade to an empty result

Example fix

// before
List<User> users = identityService.createUserQuery().privilegeName(privilegeName).list();
// after
List<User> users = privilegeName != null
        ? identityService.createUserQuery().privilegeName(privilegeName).list()
        : Collections.emptyList();

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

if (privilegeName == null || privilegeName.isEmpty()) throw new IllegalArgumentException("privilege name is required");

Type guard

boolean hasPrivilegeName(String name) { return name != null && !name.trim().isEmpty(); }

Try / catch

try { users = identityService.createUserQuery().privilegeName(name).list(); } catch (FlowableIllegalArgumentException e) { users = Collections.emptyList(); }

Prevention

Define privilege names as constants instead of ad-hoc strings
Validate config properties for privilege names at startup
Never forward raw request parameters as privilege names without checks

When it happens

Trigger: Calling identityService.createUserQuery().privilegeName(null) (which constructs this command) or new GetUsersWithPrivilegeCmd(null) directly.

Common situations: Privilege name sourced from a config property or process variable that is unset; passing a variable holding a null privilege name in identity-management admin tooling.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ea7f0868a4814ba2. Report an issue: GitHub.