title: Spring / Thymeleaf: Property or field cannot be found on null, but still rendering
body: <p>I have a Spring / Thymeleaf app that </p>
  
  <pre><code>org.springframework.expression.spel.SpelEvaluationException: EL1007E:(pos 0): Property or field 'projectName' cannot be found on null
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, the page looks normal. All variables are rendering with data. I'm just concerned that an exception is being thrown every request.</p>
  
  <p>Here is the controller:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@Controller
  @RequestMapping("/download")
  public class AppDownloaderController {
  
      @Autowired
      InstallLinkJoinedService installLinkJoinedService;
  
      @RequestMapping(value = "/link/{installLink}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
      public String getInstallLink(Model model, @PathVariable("installLink") String installLink) {
          InstallLinkJoined installLinkJoined = installLinkJoinedService.getInstallLinkWithID(installLink);
          if (installLinkJoined != null) {
              model.addAttribute("install", installLinkJoined);
          }
          return "download";
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>A snippet of the html in question:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;h3 class="achievement-heading text-primary" th:text="${install.projectName}"&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The field is part of the InstallLinkJoined object:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@Column(nullable = false)
  private String projectName;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I have getters and setters for all fields.</p>
  
  <p>If I comment out the offending line, I simply get an exception at the next variable.</p>
  
  <p>And, as mentioned, all the data in the page is showing up so obviously the model object is not null...</p>
  
  <p>What am I missing?</p>