Switch order of literals to prevent NullPointerException

[zcarroll4]

Describe the pull request
This change defensively switches the order of literals in comparison expressions to ensure that no null pointer exceptions are unexpectedly thrown. Runtime exceptions especially can cause exceptional and unexpected code paths to be taken, and this can result in unexpected behavior.

Both simple vulnerabilities (like information disclosure) and complex vulnerabilities (like business logic flaws) can take advantage of these unexpected code paths.

Our changes look something like this:

  String fieldName = header.getFieldName();
  String fieldValue = header.getFieldValue();
- if(fieldName.equals("requestId")) {
+ if("requestId".equals(fieldName)) {
    logRequest(fieldValue);
  }

More reading

• http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/476.html
• https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Java_Programming/Preventing_NullPointerException
• https://rules.sonarsource.com/java/RSPEC-1132/

License agreement
By opening this pull request, you are providing your contribution under the Apache License 2.0 (see LICENSE.md).

Note: new dependencies/libraries
Please refrain from introducing new libraries without consulting the team.

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