Dataverse creation: internal server error should be an invalid request

[jo-pol]

What steps does it take to reproduce the issue?

We get an internal server error with API request as documented with null for the theme in the following json:

{
  "id" : 0,
  "ownerId" : 0,
  "name" : "A Test Dataverse",
  "alias" : "test2",
  "permissionRoot" : false,
  "affiliation" : null,
  "description" : "This is a longer description than 'name' and 'alias'",
  "dataverseType" : "JOURNALS",
  "storageDriverLabel" : null,
  "creationDate" : null,
  "theme" : {
    "id" : 0,
    "logo" : null,
    "logoBackgroundColor" : null,
    "tagline" : null,
    "linkColor" : null,
    "textColor" : null,
    "linkUrl" : null,
    "backgroundColor" : null
  },
  "dataverseContacts" : [ {
    "displayOrder" : 0,
    "contactEmail" : "dummy@email.com"
  }, {
    "displayOrder" : 1,
    "contactEmail" : "dummier@email.com"
  } ],
  "filePIDsEnabled" : false,
  "isReleased" : false
}

• When does this issue occur?

• Which page(s) does it occurs on?

• What happens?

The server logs

[#|2025-11-18T12:19:08.810+0100|SEVERE|Payara 6.2025.3|edu.harvard.iq.dataverse.api.errorhandlers.ThrowableHandler|_ThreadID=74;_ThreadName=http-thread-pool::http-listener-1(1);_TimeMillis=1763464748810;_LevelValue=1000;|
  java.lang.ClassCastException: class jakarta.json.JsonValueImpl cannot be cast to class jakarta.json.JsonObject (jakarta.json.JsonValueImpl and jakarta.json.JsonObject are in unnamed module of loader org.apache.felix.framework.BundleWiringImpl$BundleClassLoader @42d181cd)
	at org.eclipse.parsson.JsonObjectBuilderImpl$JsonObjectImpl.getJsonObject(JsonObjectBuilderImpl.java:234)
	at edu.harvard.iq.dataverse.util.json.JsonParser.parseDataverse(JsonParser.java:155)
	at edu.harvard.iq.dataverse.api.Dataverses.parseAndValidateAddDataverseRequestBody(Dataverses.java:173)
	at edu.harvard.iq.dataverse.api.Dataverses.addDataverse(Dataverses.java:139)

• To whom does it occur (all users, curators, superusers)?

• What did you expect to happen?

get 400 Bad request, not 500 internal server error, or a missing theme should be ignored

Which version of Dataverse are you using?

A DANS variant of v6.7.1

Any related open or closed issues to this bug report?

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Are you thinking about creating a pull request for this issue?
Help is always welcome, is this bug something you or your organization plan to fix?

[jo-pol]

Both true and false for filePIDsEnabled causes File PIDs cannot be enabled per collection by

dataverse/src/main/java/edu/harvard/iq/dataverse/engine/command/impl/CreateDataverseCommand.java

Lines 95 to 97 in d63a7b1

	if (dataverse.getFilePIDsEnabled() != null && !ctxt.settings().isTrueForKey(SettingsServiceBean.Key.AllowEnablingFilePIDsPerCollection, false)) {
	throw new IllegalCommandException("File PIDs cannot be enabled per collection", this);
	}

Providing null explicitly causes an internal server error

java.lang.ClassCastException
  at org.eclipse.parsson.JsonObjectBuilderImpl$JsonObjectImpl.getBoolean(JsonObjectBuilderImpl.java:287)

The thought crossed my mind to omit null values in our requests as a workaround, but I have not yet found a clue to tell com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper to do so. My work in progress:

Mapper creation:
https://github.com/DANS-KNAW-jp/dans-dataverse-client-lib/blob/3e2c5887d37a4935e196412938f13441f393b083/examples/src/main/java/nl/knaw/dans/lib/dataverse/ExampleBase.java#L32

Write pojo a json string:
https://github.com/DANS-KNAW-jp/dans-dataverse-client-lib/blob/a4829681fe96c6687527fac5f4719bcc7f07c4db/lib/src/main/java/nl/knaw/dans/lib/dataverse/HttpClientWrapper.java#L84

The pojo:
https://github.com/DANS-KNAW-jp/dans-dataverse-client-lib/blob/3e2c5887d37a4935e196412938f13441f393b083/lib/src/main/java/nl/knaw/dans/lib/dataverse/model/dataverse/Dataverse.java

[qqmyers]

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do. It also looks like you can just omit the "theme" key if you don't have one as a work-around, and I think you can also just omit any given entry like linkUrl.

To just change the code to get a 400 for this specific exception, you could add an error handler in edu.harvard.iq.dataverse.api.errorhandlers.

If we need to support null values (do we? are we exporting nulls for these values somewhere? I don't think we generally support null vs just leaving keys out), AI suggests the following as a code change in Dataverse (which might be better as a helper method since there are several keys that need the same logic.)

if (obj.containsKey("linkUrl") && !obj.isNull("linkUrl")) {
    theme.setLinkUrl(obj.getString("linkUrl"));
} else {
    theme.setLinkUrl(null);
}

Or am I misunderstanding the problem?

[jo-pol]

Or am I misunderstanding the problem?

Updated my comment as it was off by a few lines in CreateDataverseCommand

The core problem is we are serializing pojo's to json strings. "linkUrl" : null does not seem to cause an internal error, but "theme" : null and "filePIDsEnabled": null do. I guess anything but Strings and primitives will cause an exception.

When the 500 is changed into a 400, we still have to change the serialization on our side.

[qqmyers]

So is the resolution of this issue just to change the error code to 400?

[poikilotherm]

This is related to #11945.

Maybe a handler and test case can be added to it.

[jo-pol]

Since @poikilotherm solves the response code and @janvanmansum figured out how we can skip null fields, I'm closing this issue.