500 null : Mysterious ColdFusion Error
Posted June 14, 2006 at 12:31 PM
When I first encountered the 500 null error it took many head-beating sessions to figure out what the hell was going on. The very nature of the 500 null error makes it hard to debug. This occurs (from what I can figure) when an error gets thrown so early in your application that nothing ever gets flushed to the browser. The "null" part of the error probably means that no data was received from the browser.
In order to debug this error put a CFFlush tag right after your application declaration (Application.cfm) or somewhere very early in the code. Once you get the data stream going, you sort of let gravity take over (metaphorically speaking). Now, the 500 null error will be replaced with the CFError that is actually being thrown.
CAUTION: Once done, REMOVE THE CFFLUSH. The CFFlush tag will kill of your CFLocation tags as they work via page headers (which are not settable after data has been sent to the browser).
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Reader Comments
This helped a lot. In my case it was a missing application.cfm.
Posted by BigWalt on Sep 22, 2006 at 11:27 AM
Big Walt,
Glad to help. Drop me a line if you are ever stuck on a problem.
Posted by Ben Nadel on Sep 22, 2006 at 11:29 AM
Thanks for that very useful tip!
Posted by Michel Soudee on Jul 2, 2008 at 3:37 PM
