[jbpm-issues] [JBoss JIRA] Work started: (JBPM-1914) Problem in retrieving variables of Serializable objects

Problem in retrieving variables of Serializable objects ------------------------------------------------------- Key: JBPM-1914 URL: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPM-1914 Project: JBoss jBPM Issue Type: Bug Security Level: Public(Everyone can see) Components: Core Engine Affects Versions: jBPM 3.3.0 GA Reporter: Mauro Molinari Assignee: Alejandro Guizar Fix For: jBPM 3.2.6 GA I have encountered a serious problem working with variables whose value is a serializable object. The problem is that sometimes (not always!) an error like the following is given when retrieving a variable: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.jbpm.bytes.ByteArray$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$cc67d06e The code is like: MySerializableClass obj = (MySerializableClass) contextInstance.getVariable("myVariable"); (of course, "myVariable" is a variable that I previously have set with a MySerializableClass object) Apart from the CGLIB awful problem with proxies, even if I extract the value from the proxy with the following: public static Object getCGLIBProxiedObject(final Object proxy) { if(proxy instanceof HibernateProxy) { final LazyInitializer initializer = ((HibernateProxy) proxy).getHibernateLazyInitializer(); return initializer.getImplementation(); } return proxy; } the problem is that the variable value is retrieved as a org.jbpm.bytes.ByteArray instead of a MyClass instance! I did some debugging and discovered that: - in org.jbpm.context.exe.VariableContainer.getVariable(String), when org.jbpm.context.exe.VariableContainer.hasVariableLocally(String) is called, Hibernate lazily retrieves a org.jbpm.context.exe.variableinstance.ByteArrayInstance instance from the database and creates it using its empty constructor - unfortunately, when a org.jbpm.context.exe.VariableInstance (extended by ByteArrayInstance) is constructed using its constructor, its converter instance variable remains null - the VariableInstance converter instance variable is set to something only when a VariableInstance is created using org.jbpm.context.exe.JbpmType.newVariableInstance(), but this is not the case when a VariableInstance is lazily loaded by Hibernate; in fact, in my case, org.jbpm.context.exe.JbpmType.newVariableInstance() is never called and the converter field of my ByteArrayInstance instance is always null! - this causes org.jbpm.context.exe.VariableInstance.getValue() to return the value given by org.jbpm.context.exe.variableinstance.ByteArrayInstance.getObject() without applying the necessary conversion (deserialization) Please note that my variable values are stored in jBPM database in JBPM_VARIABLEINSTANCE table with the CONVERTER column correctly populated with "R". I think this is a critical problem. By now, the only workaround I have found is to always apply the following utility method when retrieving variable values, before returning them to the client code: public static Object extractVariableValue(final Object rawValue) { Object result = CardinisJbpmUtilities.getCGLIBProxiedObject(rawValue); if(result instanceof ByteArray) try { result = new ObjectInputStream(new ByteArrayInputStream(((ByteArray) result) .getBytes())).readObject(); } catch(final Exception e) { throw new RuntimeException(e); } return result; }