Object reference not set to an instance of an object [iTunes Library]

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Whenever I try and click play, pause, next or previous I get an error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". I have a try-catch statement. YES iTunes is open!
This is basically all that I have.

VB

Imports iTunesLib

Public Class Form1
    Dim m_iTunes As iTunesApp

    Private Sub play_Click(sender As System.Object, e As System.EventArgs) Handles play.Click
            Try
                m_iTunes.Play()
            Catch ex As Exception
                MsgBox(ex.Message)
            End Try
        End Sub
End Class

I appreciate your time in helping me out :)

Posted 15-Feb-14 16:28pm

Tyler022-

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 1 · 2014-02-15T16:33:00

It's possible that m_iTunes is null because you did not initialize it. Your exception handling is pretty bad; you should never catch and handle exceptions so locally; it should be done in very few strategically defined points of code, in each thread.

You did not show where the exception with the message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" is thrown.

Not to worry. This is one of the very easiest cases to detect and fix. It simply means that some member/variable of some reference type is dereferenced by using and of its instance (non-static) members, which requires this member/variable to be non-null, but in fact it appears to be null. Simply execute it under debugger, it will stop the execution where the exception is thrown. Put a break point on that line, restart the application and come to this point again. Evaluate all references involved in next line and see which one is null while it needs to be not null. After you figure this out, fix the code: either make sure the member/variable is properly initialized to a non-null reference, or check it for null and, in case of null, do something else.

Please see also: want to display next record on button click. but got an error in if condition of next record function "object reference not set to an instance of an object"[^].

Sometimes, you cannot do it under debugger, by one or another reason. One really nasty case is when the problem is only manifested if software is built when debug information is not available. In this case, you have to use the harder way. First, you need to make sure that you never block propagation of exceptions by handling them silently (this is a crime of developers against themselves, yet very usual). The you need to catch absolutely all exceptions on the very top stack frame of each thread. You can do it if you handle the exceptions of the type System.Exception. In the handler, you need to log all the exception information, especially the System.Exception.StackTrace:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.exception.aspx[^],
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.exception.stacktrace.aspx[^].

The stack trace is just a string showing the full path of exception propagation from the throw statement to the handler. By reading it, you can always find ends. For logging, it's the best (in most cases) to use the class System.Diagnostics.EventLog:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.eventlog.aspx[^].

Good luck,

—SA