Can't connect to MySQL from Java: NullPointerException inside MySQL driver connection logic

Question

I'm trying to connect to a database I created with MySQL in my Java program, but it always fails.

For the sake of example, here is my code:

import java.sql.*;

public class Squirrel {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String user;
        String password;
        Connection connection;
        Statement statement;
        try {
            Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");

            connection = DriverManager.getConnection(
                "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306", user, password);

            statement = connection.createStatement();

            // Other code
        } catch (ClassNotFoundException | SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            try {
                if (statement != null) {
                    statement.close();
                }
                if (connection != null) {
                    connection.close();
                }
            } catch (SQLException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
}

I am able to connect to the database from within IntelliJ and have added the mysql-connector-java-5.1.40.jar added to the project, but each time I run the program DriverManager.getConnection() throws this:

com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLNonTransientConnectionException: Could not create connection to database server.
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
    at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:488)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:425)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.getInstance(Util.java:408)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:918)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:897)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:886)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createSQLException(SQLError.java:860)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.connectOneTryOnly(ConnectionImpl.java:2330)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.createNewIO(ConnectionImpl.java:2083)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.<init>(ConnectionImpl.java:806)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection.<init>(JDBC4Connection.java:47)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
    at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:488)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:425)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getInstance(ConnectionImpl.java:410)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver.connect(NonRegisteringDriver.java:328)
    at java.sql/java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:678)
    at java.sql/java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:229)
    at Squirrel.main(Squirrel.java:12)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getServerCharset(ConnectionImpl.java:2997)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendConnectionAttributes(MysqlIO.java:1934)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.proceedHandshakeWithPluggableAuthentication(MysqlIO.java:1863)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.doHandshake(MysqlIO.java:1226)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.coreConnect(ConnectionImpl.java:2253)
    at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.connectOneTryOnly(ConnectionImpl.java:2284)
... 13 more

Answer 1

It might be because you're using an older version of the MySQL driver. You should try using the newest version.

To get the newest version, you can check https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/mysql/mysql-connector-java

As of right now, the newest version is 8.0.11. You can download it here or add this to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>mysql</groupId>
    <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
    <version>8.0.11</version>
</dependency>

Update

Upon further investigation, it seems that it's because of a change that was introduced in MySQL 8.0.1:

The issue you reported is related to the changes introduced in MySQL 8.0.1 wrt the character sets and collations support, with the addition of now being 'utf8mb4' the default char set. Such changes broke the way Connector/J initializes connections.

As you know this was fixed in Connector/J 5.1.41 and I'm sure you already updated your library.

reference

Like mentionned above, an alternative fix to your problem would have been to use the 5.1.41 instead of 5.1.40.