[netcdf-java] NullPointerException while parsing hdf5 header

• To: "netcdf-java@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <netcdf-java@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Subject: [netcdf-java] NullPointerException while parsing hdf5 header
• From: David Kegley <kegs@xxxxxx>
• Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2021 16:02:37 +0000
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Hi All,

I’m attempting to parse a HDF5 file using the netcdf-java library and I’m 
getting the following NullPointer exception while parsing the file header.

[main] WARN ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5header - HDF5 file /tmp/data.h5 not handling 
hdf integer type (0) with size= 16
java.io.IOException: java.lang.NullPointerException
 at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFile.open(NetcdfFile.java:384)
 at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFile.open(NetcdfFile.java:343)
 at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFile.open(NetcdfFile.java:326)
 at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFile.open(NetcdfFile.java:312)
 at gov.noaa.pfel.coastwatch.griddata.NcHelper.openFile(NcHelper.java:712)
 at gov.noaa.pfel.coastwatch.griddata.NcHelper.ncdump(NcHelper.java:104)
 at 
gov.noaa.pfel.erddap.dataset.EDDTableFromMultidimNcFiles.generateDatasetsXml(EDDTableFromMultidimNcFiles.java:228)
 at gov.noaa.pfel.erddap.GenerateDatasetsXml.doIt(GenerateDatasetsXml.java:656)
 at gov.noaa.pfel.erddap.GenerateDatasetsXml.main(GenerateDatasetsXml.java:974)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
 at ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5header.readAttributeData(H5header.java:1154)
 at ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5header.makeAttribute(H5header.java:1002)
 at ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5header.makeAttributes(H5header.java:978)
 at ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5header.makeNetcdfGroup(H5header.java:562)
 at ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5header.makeNetcdfGroup(H5header.java:488)
 at ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5header.read(H5header.java:197)
 at ucar.nc2.iosp.hdf5.H5iosp.open(H5iosp.java:108)
 at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFile.<init>(NetcdfFile.java:1590)
 at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFile.open(NetcdfFile.java:782)
 at ucar.nc2.NetcdfFile.open(NetcdfFile.java:381)
 ... 8 more

The version info from my netcdf-java jar manifest:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Implementation-Title: CDM core library
Implementation-Version: 5.3.3
Built-By: ubuntu
Implementation-Vendor-Id: edu.ucar
Implementation-URL: https://docs.unidata.ucar.edu/thredds/netcdf-java/
 5.3/userguide/index.html
Created-By: Gradle 3.5.1
Build-Jdk: 1.8.0_161
Built-On: 2020-06-17T05:48:56+0000
Implementation-Vendor: UCAR/Unidata
Main-Class: ucar.nc2.NCdumpW

Additional background:

I’m using the ERDDAP toolkit (https://github.com/BobSimons/erddap/tree/v2.11) 
which utilizes this library, so I’m not calling these methods directly myself.
ERDDAP docker image: axiom/docker-erddap:2.11

The same hdf5 file can be parsed successfully using h5ls:

$ h5ls -frv /tmp/data.h5
Opened "/tmp/data.h5" with sec2 driver.
…

Any thoughts on this would be very helpful. I’m not very familiar with this 
library so if I’m overlooking any relevant details for debugging then please 
let me know.
Unfortunately I cannot share the hdf5 file itself or its schema

Thanks!
David

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: [netcdf-java] NullPointerException while parsing hdf5 header
    • From: John Caron