flowable/flowable-engine · error · FlowableIllegalArgumentException

token is null

Error message

token is null

What it means

SaveTokenCmd persists an authentication Token through the TokenEntityManager (insert for new tokens, update for existing). Since persistence requires an actual Token instance, a null argument is rejected with FlowableIllegalArgumentException.

Solutions

1. Create the token first (identityService.newToken()) and populate it before saving
2. Check the code path that produced the null token (lookup already returned nothing)
3. Null-check before saving and skip or recreate the token accordingly

Example fix

// before
identityService.saveToken(token);
// after
if (token == null) {
    token = identityService.newToken();
}
identityService.saveToken(token);

if (token == null) throw new IllegalArgumentException("token must not be null");

boolean isSavableToken(Token t) { return t != null && t.getId() != null && !t.getId().trim().isEmpty(); }

try { identityService.saveToken(token); } catch (FlowableIllegalArgumentException e) { log.error("Attempted to save null token", e); }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling identityService.saveToken(null) or executing new SaveTokenCmd(config, null); also when a token variable from an earlier lookup/cleanup job is null at save time.

Common situations: Custom remember-me / token-store code that loads then saves a token which was already purged; deserialized token objects missing from request payloads.

Related errors

• entityClass is null
• group is null
• groupId is null
• groupId is null
• name is null

AI-assisted analysis of flowable/flowable-engine@d6d39ce1c6 (2026-09-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7a80f06309340711. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at modules/flowable-idm-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/idm/engine/impl/cmd/SaveTokenCmd.java:45

 * @author Tijs Rademakers
 */
public class SaveTokenCmd implements Command<Void>, Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    
    protected IdmEngineConfiguration idmEngineConfiguration;
    
    protected Token token;

    public SaveTokenCmd(Token token, IdmEngineConfiguration idmEngineConfiguration) {
        this.token = token;
        this.idmEngineConfiguration = idmEngineConfiguration;
    }

    @Override
    public Void execute(CommandContext commandContext) {
        if (token == null) {
            throw new FlowableIllegalArgumentException("token is null");
        }

        if (idmEngineConfiguration.getTokenEntityManager().isNewToken(token)) {
            if (token instanceof TokenEntity) {
                idmEngineConfiguration.getTokenEntityManager().insert((TokenEntity) token, true);
            } else {
                CommandContextUtil.getDbSqlSession(commandContext).insert((Entity) token, idmEngineConfiguration.getIdGenerator());
            }
        } else {
            idmEngineConfiguration.getTokenEntityManager().updateToken(token);
        }

        return null;
    }
}

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