Problems calling a method from a different class

Question

Like many programmers, I'm having a go at making my own chat room. All has been going well so far, however I am having trouble calling the method which connects the client to the server, from the method which actually starts the server.
The method for starting the server:
public static void serverStart () throws IOException {
        new Thread () {
        public void run() {
            try {
                ServerSocket serverSock = new ServerSocket (client.serverPort);
            while (true) {
                Socket serverClient = serverSock.accept ();
                ChatHandler handler = new ChatHandler(serverClient);
                handler.start ();
            } catch (IOException ex) {     
                connectTo.handleIOException(ex);     
        }.start();
        try {
            connectTo.start();
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            connectTo.handleIOException(ex);
    }The part of interest is the "connectTo.start()" line, as this is the one which calls a method in the class connectToMethod which tells the client to connect to this newly started server. Now for the client connection code:
public synchronized void start () throws IOException {
      if (listener == null) {
          Socket socket = new Socket (client.serverAddr, client.serverPort);
          try {
              dataIn = new DataInputStream
                      (new BufferedInputStream (socket.getInputStream ()));
              dataOut = new DataOutputStream
                      (new BufferedOutputStream (socket.getOutputStream ()));
          } catch (IOException ex) {
          socket.close ();
          throw ex;
      listener = new Thread (this);
      listener.start ();
  }Now when the server starts, it should automatically start the connection method "start()" and connect to itself. However I am getting a NullPointerException error at the line "connectTo.start();" from the server code. The server and connection client actually work separately, just not when I try to connect from the server itself. I have tried a few ways of getting around this problem, all without success. If anyone could give some input on what might be wrong, or a possible way to fix it, I'd be very grateful.

Answer 1

Sorry, connectTo comes from:
connectToMethod connectTo = new
connectToMethod();
That doesn't necessarily mean this variable reference is the same one as in the code where the NullPointerException was thrown though.
Or the exception was thrown inside the start() method. The runtime isn't lying to you. You have a null reference (pointer) where it says you do.