Trouble with Arrays of Menus and Menu Items

Question

Okay the short story is I am designing a GUI for an application, it has a lot of menus, and a lot of menu items per menu.
I thought like in normal Java I could simply make an array of Menus and several arrays of menu items. My problem is that it compiles fine, but spews tons of exceptions. I am using Netbeans as my IDE.
Here is a sample of my code. Its not the whole thing, but its the part that I suspect has problems since it worked before I switched to doing them as arrays.
Menu [] menus = new Menu [11];
menus[0].setText("File");
MenuItem [] file = new MenuItem [8]; //FILE MENU DEFINITIONS
file[2].setText("Open"); //open
file[2].setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
@Override
public void handle(ActionEvent arg0) {
FileChooser fc = new FileChooser();
File file =fc.showOpenDialog(primaryStage);
// file[2].setAccelerator(null);
menus[0].getItems().addAll(file);
MenuBar menubar = MenuBarBuilder.create()
.build();
menubar.getMenus().addAll(menus);
VBox vbox1 = VBoxBuilder.create()
.children(menubar,scrollPane1,btn)
.build();
ap.getChildren().addAll(vbox1);
Anyways the stuff compiles just fine no errors. But Netbeans spews exceptions like a guy who chugged a bottle of ipecac and the programs bombs.
Here is some of them.
Exception in Application start method
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
     at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
     at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
     at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:601)
     at com.javafx.main.Main.launchApp(Main.java:642)
     at com.javafx.main.Main.main(Main.java:805)
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception in Application start method
     at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplication1(LauncherImpl.java:403)
     at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.access$000(LauncherImpl.java:47)
     at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl$1.run(LauncherImpl.java:115)
     at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
     at javafxapplication2.JavaFXApplication2.start(JavaFXApplication2.java:37)
     at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl$5.run(LauncherImpl.java:319)
     at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$5.run(PlatformImpl.java:206)
     at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl$4.run(PlatformImpl.java:173)
     at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication._runLoop(Native Method)
     at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication.access$100(WinApplication.java:29)
     at com.sun.glass.ui.win.WinApplication$3$1.run(WinApplication.java:73)
     ... 1 more
Java Result: 1
I am not really sure what to do. I would like some recommendations.
If possible I would still like to use arrays of Menus and Menu Items, but if its not possible, I would like to know and understand why not.

Answer 1

I apologize if I don't fully understand. I am still kind new to this. But It was my understanding that .jar file was made after compiling not before. I am not really sure what you mean by class path. Could you give an example. Again this code worked wonderfully before I used arrays. If I comment it out and replace it with dummy code like this it compiles and runs just fine.
MenuItem open = new MenuItem("TEST");
Menu debug =new Menu("DEBUG");
debug.getItems().add(open);
MenuBar menubar = MenuBarBuilder.create()
.build();
menubar.getMenus().addAll(debug);
StackPane rootz = new StackPane();
final TextArea textArea =TextAreaBuilder.create()
.prefWidth(600)
.prefHeight(400)
.wrapText(true)
.build();
ScrollPane scrollPane1 = new ScrollPane();
scrollPane1.getStyleClass().add("no-border-scroll-pane");
scrollPane1.setMinSize(400, 400);
scrollPane1.setContent(textArea);
VBox vbox1 = VBoxBuilder.create()
.children(menubar,scrollPane1,btn)
.build();
ap.getChildren().addAll(vbox1);
btn.setOnAction(new EventHandler<ActionEvent>() {
@Override
public void handle(ActionEvent arg0) {
System.out.println("Hello World!");
FileChooser fc = new FileChooser();
File file =fc.showOpenDialog(primaryStage);
Scene scene = new Scene(ap, 760, 500);
primaryStage.setTitle("Hello World!");
primaryStage.setScene(scene);
primaryStage.show();
* The main() method is ignored in correctly deployed JavaFX application.
* main() serves only as fallback in case the application can not be
* launched through deployment artifacts, e.g., in IDEs with limited FX
* support. NetBeans ignores main().
* @param args the command line arguments
public static void main(String[] args) {
launch(args);
}