Kotlin Coroutines + OkHttp + Retrofit throw errors on 204 responses

[luiges90]

What kind of issue is this?

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Retrofit version: Tested on 2.7.0 and 2.9.0 and getting the same issue.

Expected: No error.

Actual:

Exception in thread "main" kotlin.KotlinNullPointerException: Response from com.example.retrofit_okhttp_kotlin.WebInterface.logout was null but response body type was declared as non-null
	at retrofit2.KotlinExtensions$await$2$2.onResponse(KotlinExtensions.kt:43)
	at retrofit2.OkHttpCall$1.onResponse(OkHttpCall.java:161)
	at okhttp3.internal.connection.RealCall$AsyncCall.run(RealCall.kt:519)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

Reproduce code:

package com.example.retrofit_okhttp_kotlin

import kotlinx.coroutines.runBlocking
import okhttp3.OkHttpClient
import okhttp3.mockwebserver.MockResponse
import okhttp3.mockwebserver.MockWebServer
import retrofit2.Retrofit
import retrofit2.http.GET

fun main() = runBlocking {
    val server = MockWebServer()
    server.enqueue(MockResponse().setResponseCode(204))
    server.start()

    val okhttp = OkHttpClient.Builder()
        .build()
    val retrofit = Retrofit.Builder()
        .baseUrl(server.url("/user/revoke/"))
        .client(okhttp)
        .build()
        .create(WebInterface::class.java)

    retrofit.logout()
}

interface WebInterface {
    @GET("user/revoke")
    suspend fun logout()
}

Other notes:

Tried all solutions in https://github.com/square/retrofit/issues/1554 but no avail because in retrofit2.OkHttpCall#parseResponse it is hardcoded to return null body upon receiving 204 or 205 response codes and skipped any response converters that I would have added.

 Response<T> parseResponse(okhttp3.Response rawResponse) throws IOException {
    ResponseBody rawBody = rawResponse.body();

    // Remove the body's source (the only stateful object) so we can pass the response along.
    rawResponse = rawResponse.newBuilder()
        .body(new NoContentResponseBody(rawBody.contentType(), rawBody.contentLength()))
        .build();

    int code = rawResponse.code();
    if (code < 200 || code >= 300) {
      try {
        // Buffer the entire body to avoid future I/O.
        ResponseBody bufferedBody = Utils.buffer(rawBody);
        return Response.error(bufferedBody, rawResponse);
      } finally {
        rawBody.close();
      }
    }

    if (code == 204 || code == 205) { // <-- entered this branch
      rawBody.close();
      return Response.success(null, rawResponse); // <-- returns here
    }

    ExceptionCatchingResponseBody catchingBody = new ExceptionCatchingResponseBody(rawBody);
    try {
      T body = responseConverter.convert(catchingBody); // <-- All converters I would ever add would be here, which is never run in this case
      return Response.success(body, rawResponse);
    } catch (RuntimeException e) {
      // If the underlying source threw an exception, propagate that rather than indicating it was
      // a runtime exception.
      catchingBody.throwIfCaught();
      throw e;
    }
  }

This response is promptly sent to retrofit2.KotlinExtensions which hardcoded an error case with a null body.

override fun onResponse(call: Call<T>, response: Response<T>) {
        if (response.isSuccessful) {
          val body = response.body()
          if (body == null) { // <-- entered this branch
            val invocation = call.request().tag(Invocation::class.java)!!
            val method = invocation.method()
            val e = KotlinNullPointerException("Response from " +
                method.declaringClass.name +
                '.' +
                method.name +
                " was null but response body type was declared as non-null")
            continuation.resumeWithException(e) // <-- error thrown here
          } else {
            continuation.resume(body)
          }
        } else {
          continuation.resumeWithException(HttpException(response))
        }
      }

Also checked https://github.com/square/retrofit/issues/2494 but the reporter was not using Kotlin Update: May be related to https://github.com/square/retrofit/issues/3075

[songsongtao]

+1

[akka81]

No news about this issue?

[lukaszkalnik]

You might want to take a look at a Retrofit adapter for Either (currently in PR): https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow/pull/2621 It lets you define your API as returning Unit in case of success and then accepts null response body:

suspend fun postSomething(): Either<CallError, Unit> // accepts null response body

[victor-munoz]

Is using https://github.com/arrow-kt/arrow/pull/2621 the only solution for this issue?

[lukaszkalnik]

Actually there is an even simpler workaround: change the return type of your API call to Response<Unit>:

import retrofit2.Response

interface WebInterface {

    @GET("user/revoke")
    suspend fun logout(): Response<Unit>
}

However in this case if you get an error response like 4xx or 5xx then your method won't throw an exception, as described in https://github.com/square/retrofit/issues/3075#issuecomment-588579708

[victor-munoz]

Thanks lukaszkalnik, Sadly, I need to perform specific actions in case of 4xx or 5xx responses, so do not throw an exception will be a problem.

Currently I am replacing the 204 code with a 200 code using a NetworkInterceptor to avoid trowing a KotlinNullPointerException

          OkHttpClient.Builder().addNetworkInterceptor { chain ->
                val request = chain.request()
                val response: Response = chain.proceed(request)
                if(response.code() == 204) response.newBuilder().code(200).build()
                else response
            }.build().run {
                Retrofit.Builder()
                    .baseUrl(YOUR_URL)
                    .addConverterFactory(GsonConverterFactory.create(GsonBuilder().create()))
                    .addCallAdapterFactory(CoroutineCallAdapterFactory())
                    .client(this)
                    .build()
                    .create(YourService::class.java)
            }

[mtwolak]

We had a production incident because of this bug. Sadly we also had to make some manual workarounds.