Conversion error com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.ConversionException

I am trying to run JMeter scripts automatically. But i am getting following error.

INFO 2020-07-27 15:17:27.723 [jmeter.e] (): Listeners will be started after enabling running version
INFO 2020-07-27 15:17:27.751 [jmeter.e] (): To revert to the earlier behaviour, define jmeterengine.startlistenerslater=false
INFO 2020-07-27 15:17:29.094 [jmeter.u] (): Setting Locale to en_US
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.jmeter.engine.StandardJMeterEngine.configure(StandardJMeterEngine.java:176)
at com.apache.maven.ApacheMavenJmeterIntegration.main(ApacheMavenJmeterIntegration.java:28)

code

package com.apache.maven;

import java.io.FileInputStream;

import org.apache.jmeter.engine.StandardJMeterEngine;
import org.apache.jmeter.save.SaveService;
import org.apache.jmeter.util.JMeterUtils;
import org.apache.jorphan.collections.HashTree;

public class ApacheMavenJmeterIntegration {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        StandardJMeterEngine jmeter = new StandardJMeterEngine();

        JMeterUtils.loadJMeterProperties("F:/apache-jmeter-5.3/bin/jmeter.properties");
        JMeterUtils.setJMeterHome("F:/apache-jmeter-5.3");
        JMeterUtils.initLocale();
        JMeterUtils.initLogging();

        SaveService.loadProperties();
        FileInputStream in = new FileInputStream("F:\\apache-maven-3.6.3\\bin\\src\\test\\jmeter\\PlanPackage.jmx");

        HashTree testPlanTree = SaveService.loadTree(in);
        in.close();

        jmeter.configure(testPlanTree);
        jmeter.run();

    }
}

pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
	<groupId>com.apache.maven</groupId>
	<artifactId>com.apache.maven</artifactId>
	<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>

	<dependencies>
		<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.maven.plugins/maven-dependency-plugin -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
			<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
			<version>3.1.1</version>
		</dependency>
		<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.jmeter/ApacheJMeter_core -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.apache.jmeter</groupId>
			<artifactId>ApacheJMeter_core</artifactId>
			<version>2.6</version>
		</dependency>
		<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.jmeter/ApacheJMeter_http -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.apache.jmeter</groupId>
			<artifactId>ApacheJMeter_http</artifactId>
			<version>2.8</version>
		</dependency>

	</dependencies>
	<build>
		<plugins>
			<plugin>
				<groupId>com.lazerycode.jmeter</groupId>
				<artifactId>jmeter-maven-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>3.1.0</version>
			</plugin>
			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
				<artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>3.0.0</version>
				<executions>
					<execution>
						<goals>
							<goal>java</goal>
						</goals>
					</execution>
				</executions>
				<configuration>
					<mainClass>com.apache.maven.ApacheMaven</mainClass>
					<arguments>
						<argument>foo</argument>
						<argument>bar</argument>
					</arguments>
				</configuration>
			</plugin>
		</plugins>
	</build>
</project>

jmeter.log

2020/07/27 15:17:35 INFO  - jmeter.save.SaveService: Testplan (JMX) version: 2.2. Testlog (JTL) version: 2.2 
2020/07/27 15:17:35 INFO  - jmeter.save.SaveService: Using SaveService properties file encoding UTF-8 
2020/07/27 15:17:35 INFO  - jmeter.save.SaveService: Using SaveService properties version 5.0 
2020/07/27 15:17:35 WARN  - jmeter.save.SaveService: Bad _version - expected 2.2, found 5.0. 
2020/07/27 15:17:35 INFO  - jmeter.save.SaveService: All converter versions present and correct 
2020/07/27 15:17:37 ERROR - jmeter.save.SaveService: Conversion error com.thoughtworks.xstream.converters.ConversionException: org/apache/jmeter/testelement/TestStateListener : org/apache/jmeter/testelement/TestStateListener
---- Debugging information ----
message             : org/apache/jmeter/testelement/TestStateListener
cause-exception     : java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError
cause-message       : org/apache/jmeter/testelement/TestStateListener
first-jmeter-class  : org.apache.jmeter.protocol.http.sampler.HTTPSamplerBaseConverter.canConvert(HTTPSamplerBaseConverter.java:52)
class               : org.apache.jmeter.save.ScriptWrapper
required-type       : org.apache.jmeter.save.ScriptWrapper
path                : /jmeterTestPlan/hashTree
line number         : 3
------------------------------- 

If you need to run your JMeter test with the help of JMeter Maven Plugin - you don't need to write any code, just use the following pom.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>jmeter-maven</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>com.lazerycode.jmeter</groupId>
                <artifactId>jmeter-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.1.1</version>
                <executions>
                    <!-- Generate JMeter configuration -->
                    <execution>
                        <id>configuration</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>configure</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                    <!-- Run JMeter tests -->
                    <execution>
                        <id>jmeter-tests</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>jmeter</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                    <!-- Fail build on errors in test -->
                    <execution>
                        <id>jmeter-check-results</id>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>results</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
                <!-- Generate HTML Reporting Dashboard -->
                <configuration>
                    <generateReports>true</generateReports>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>


</project>

and put your .jmx test script(s) under src/test/jmeter folder relative to the pom.xml so your project would look like:

- pom.xml
- src
  - test
     - jmeter
       - your-test.jmx

More information: How to Use the JMeter Maven Plugin