Problem with SQLite

[Alejandro Barrero]

I have the following test Class:

package com.test;

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.sql.Statement;

public class SQLiteJdbc {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		Connection conn = connect();
		try {
			Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
			String sql = "SELECT * FROM user";
      ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);
      while(rs.next()){
      	String name = rs.getString("first_name");
  			System.out.println("Name is " + name);
      }
		} catch (SQLException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
	}

	public static Connection connect() {
		Connection conn = null;
		try {
			// db parameters
			String url = "jdbc:sqlite:C:\\SAV\\Database\\PaperlessOffice.db";
			// create a connection to the database
			Class.forName("org.sqlite.JDBC");
			conn = DriverManager.getConnection(url);
		} catch (SQLException | ClassNotFoundException e) {
			System.out.println(e.getMessage());
		} finally {
			try {
				if (conn != null) {
					conn.close();
				}
			} catch (SQLException ex) {
				System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
			}
		}
		return conn;
	}

}

My problem is that the code was working a week ago, but now i am getting java.lang.NullPointerException in  Class Stmt in package org.sqlite at lin6 of method main  and line 121 in executeQuery. Method connect appears to work correctly and I still have the database in the same path.
I don't remember changing anything.

[Ron McLeod]

In your connect method, you are closing the database connection regardless of whether the attempt to open a connection was successful or throw an exception.

You can safely remove the finally block - if the opening the connection failed, the connection will not be opened, so it there is no need to close it.

finally {
	try {
		if (conn != null) {
			conn.close();
		}
	} catch (SQLException ex) {
		System.out.println(ex.getMessage());
	}
}

[Alejandro Barrero]

Thank you very much; however, this code  has been working for years and it was working las week. Well, it looks bad and I will eliminate it any way.