Unhelpful error message: a JSON pointer should start with '/' or '#/'

[wlk]

I'm trying to test out this project but after loading my schema I got following exception:

An exception or error caused a run to abort: a JSON pointer should start with '/' or '#/' 
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: a JSON pointer should start with '/' or '#/'
    at org.json.JSONPointer.<init>(JSONPointer.java:155)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.internal.JSONPointer.queryFrom(JSONPointer.java:183)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.internal.JSONPointer.query(JSONPointer.java:171)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.lookupReference(SchemaLoader.java:578)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.buildSchemaWithoutExplicitType(SchemaLoader.java:435)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.load(SchemaLoader.java:517)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.loadChild(SchemaLoader.java:530)
    at java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline$3$1.accept(ReferencePipeline.java:193)
    at java.util.stream.IntPipeline$4$1.accept(IntPipeline.java:250)
    at java.util.stream.Streams$RangeIntSpliterator.forEachRemaining(Streams.java:110)
    at java.util.Spliterator$OfInt.forEachRemaining(Spliterator.java:693)
    at java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.copyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:481)
    at java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.wrapAndCopyInto(AbstractPipeline.java:471)
    at java.util.stream.ReduceOps$ReduceOp.evaluateSequential(ReduceOps.java:708)
    at java.util.stream.AbstractPipeline.evaluate(AbstractPipeline.java:234)
    at java.util.stream.ReferencePipeline.collect(ReferencePipeline.java:499)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.tryCombinedSchema(SchemaLoader.java:640)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.load(SchemaLoader.java:514)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.load(SchemaLoader.java:223)
    at org.everit.json.schema.loader.SchemaLoader.load(SchemaLoader.java:206)

(I think the actual contents of the schema is unimportant)

This is unhelpful for me because the message should include information where the problem is happening so I could fix it without manually looking at the schema

[wlk]

Also I think this requirement is invalid, the # is also allowed pointer value.

See: http://json-schema.org/draft-04/schema grep for:

"items": { "$ref": "#" }

[erosb]

Hello, thanks for reporting it. I would handle the JSON Pointer handling and the helpfulness of the exception message as two separate issues. The first one is a bug in the org.json library, so I will fix that bug in that project. The second one (making the schema loading failure reports more descriptive) is more a feature improvement than a bugreport, and also it will probably take more serious efforts to change.