JPPFTask.getTaskObject() is used when a uer submits a task that is not a subclass of JPPFTask, to get the actual task object submitted by the user.

For tasks that are subclasses of JPPFTask, the method returns null. This causes an incovenience in terms of coding, since you have to check for nullity if you need to perform operations on a task (on the node-side for instance), regardless the way it was submitted. You have to code things like this:

JPPFTask task = ...;
Object taskObject = task.getTaskObject();
if (taskObject == null) {
  // do something with 'task'
} else {
  // do something with 'taskObject'
}

Instead, by default JPPFask.getTaskObject() should return the task instance itself:

public Object getTaskObject() {
  return this;
}