JavaScript in Facelets causes java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: null source

Question

I am new to Javascript and Java Server Faces and I am having the next Problem.

The Code below is working ok:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"   
      xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
      xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
      xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets">
    <head>
    <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
    <script type="text/javascript">
        function initialize() 
        {
            alert("Testing");
        }
    </script>
    </head>
    <body onload="initialize()">

        <h1 align="center">Sol-Tech</h1><br  />

    </body>
</html>

But when I add a FOR loop, it doesn't work:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"   
      xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
      xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
      xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets">
    <head>
    <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
    <script type="text/javascript">
        function initialize() 
        {
            for(var i; i<3; i++)
            {
                alert("Test");  
            }
        }
    </script>
    </head>
    <body onload="initialize()">

        <h1 align="center">Sol-Tech</h1><br  />

    </body>
</html>

enter image description here

Has anyone any suggestion on how to perform a FOR loop in javascript without getting an error?

Thanks in advance, Emanuel

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

You're using an outdated version of Mojarra which exposes a bug wherein this kind of IllegalArgumentException: null source is incorrectly been thrown when the view file contains a XML syntax error or when the view couldn't be restored. See also java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: null source and JSF issue 1762.

If you upgrade to a newer Mojarra version (currently already 2.1.14), then you'll in this particular case get a more self-explaining XML syntax error on the character < which indicates the start of a XML element. Facelets is namely a XML based view technology and parsed by a SAX parser. You'd need to replace the XML special character < by <

for(var i=0; i&lt;3; i++) {
    alert("Test");  
}

or to put the whole script in a CDATA block

<script type="text/javascript">
  <![CDATA[
    function initialize() 
    {
        for(var i=0; i<3; i++)
        {
            alert("Test");  
        }
    }
  ]]>
</script>

or to just put it in its own .js file so that it won't be parsed as XML.

<script type="text/javascript" src="script.js"></script>

JavaScript in Facelets causes java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: null source

1 Answers1

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