flowable/flowable-engine · error · FlowableIllegalArgumentException

Provided tokenDateBefore is null

Error message

Provided tokenDateBefore is null

What it means

Flowable's TokenQueryImpl.tokenDateBefore(Date tokenDateBefore) throws FlowableIllegalArgumentException when the argument is null. This upper-bound date criterion must be non-null to be translated into a SQL comparison. It is checked eagerly in the fluent API.

Source

Thrown at modules/flowable-idm-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/idm/engine/impl/TokenQueryImpl.java:101

            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("Provided token value is null");
        }
        this.tokenValue = tokenValue;
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public TokenQuery tokenDate(Date tokenDate) {
        if (tokenDate == null) {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("Provided token date is null");
        }
        this.tokenDate = tokenDate;
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public TokenQuery tokenDateBefore(Date tokenDateBefore) {
        if (tokenDateBefore == null) {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("Provided tokenDateBefore is null");
        }
        this.tokenDateBefore = tokenDateBefore;
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public TokenQuery tokenDateAfter(Date tokenDateAfter) {
        if (tokenDateAfter == null) {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("Provided tokenDateAfter is null");
        }
        this.tokenDateAfter = tokenDateAfter;
        return this;
    }

    @Override
    public TokenQuery ipAddress(String ipAddress) {
        if (ipAddress == null) {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("Provided ip address is null");

View on GitHub (pinned to d6d39ce1c6)

Solutions

1. Compute the cutoff date safely and skip the criterion if it cannot be computed
2. Apply the filter only when non-null: if (until != null) query.tokenDateBefore(until);
3. Default the cutoff to a sensible value like new Date() instead of null

Example fix

// before
TokenQuery query = identityService.createTokenQuery().tokenDateBefore(cutoff);
// after
TokenQuery query = identityService.createTokenQuery();
if (cutoff != null) {
    query.tokenDateBefore(cutoff);
}

if (cutoff == null) { throw new IllegalArgumentException("cutoff must not be null before tokenDateBefore()"); }

boolean hasCutoff(Date cutoff) { return cutoff != null; }

try { query.tokenDateBefore(cutoff); } catch (FlowableIllegalArgumentException e) { log.warn("Invalid token query: {}", e.getMessage()); }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling tokenDateBefore(null) on a TokenQuery, commonly when an 'until' date parameter was optional and null was passed unconditionally, or a date computation (e.g. Calendar operations) produced null.

Common situations: Cleanup jobs finding tokens older than a cutoff where the cutoff calculation failed; REST endpoints with optional until/from filters; scheduler code where a configured date was not resolved.

Related errors

• Provided token date is null
• Provided tokenDateAfter is null
• Provided id is null
• Provided ids is null
• Provided token value is null

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/3f5ea9f3b8ec79d4. Report an issue: GitHub.