Spring @Transactional not creating required transaction

Question

Ok, so I've finally bowed to peer pressure and started using Spring in my web app :-)...

So I'm trying to get the transaction handling stuff to work, and I just can't seem to get it.

My Spring configuration looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx.xsd"&gt;

    <bean id="groupDao" class="mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao" lazy-init="true">
        <property name="entityManagerFactory" ><ref bean="entityManagerFactory"/></property>
    </bean>

 <!-- enables interpretation of the @Required annotation to ensure that dependency injection actually occures -->
  <bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor"/>  

  <!-- enables interpretation of the @PersistenceUnit/@PersistenceContext annotations providing convenient
       access to EntityManagerFactory/EntityManager -->
  <bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor"/>

  <!-- uses the persistence unit defined in the META-INF/persistence.xml JPA configuration file -->
  <bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalEntityManagerFactoryBean">
        <property name="persistenceUnitName" value="CONOPS_PU" /> 
  </bean>

  <!-- transaction manager for use with a single JPA EntityManagerFactory for transactional data access
       to a single datasource -->
  <bean id="jpaTransactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager">
      <property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory"/>
  </bean>

  <!-- enables interpretation of the @Transactional annotation for declerative transaction managment
       using the specified JpaTransactionManager -->
  <tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="jpaTransactionManager" proxy-target-class="true"/>

</beans>

persistence.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="1.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd"&gt;

  <persistence-unit name="CONOPS_PU" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">

    <provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider>

    ... Class mappings removed for brevity...

    <properties>

      <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect"/>

      <property name="hibernate.connection.autocommit" value="false"/>
      <property name="hibernate.connection.username" value="****"/>
      <property name="hibernate.connection.password" value="*****"/>

      <property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class" value="oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver"/>
      <property name="hibernate.connection.url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@*****:1521:*****"/>
      <property name="hibernate.cache.provider_class" value="org.hibernate.cache.NoCacheProvider"/>
      <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="create"/>
      <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true"/>
      <property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true"/>

    </properties>

  </persistence-unit>

</persistence>

The DAO method to save my domain object looks like this:

    @Transactional(propagation=Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW)
    protected final T saveOrUpdate (T model)
    {
        EntityManager em = emf.createEntityManager ( );
        EntityTransaction trans = em.getTransaction ( );

        System.err.println ("Transaction isActive () == " + trans.isActive ( ));

        if (em != null)
        {
            try
            {
                if (model.getId ( ) != null)
                {
                    em.persist (model);
                    em.flush ();
                }
                else
                {
                    em.merge (model);
                    em.flush ();
                }
            }
            finally
            {
                em.close ();
            }
        }

        return (model);
    }

So I try to save a copy of my Group object using the following code in my test case:

    context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(configs);
    dao = (GroupDao)context.getBean("groupDao");

    dao.saveOrUpdate (new Group ());

This bombs with the following exception:

javax.persistence.TransactionRequiredException: no transaction is in progress
    at org.hibernate.ejb.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.flush(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:301)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:48)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:37)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:600)
    at org.springframework.orm.jpa.ExtendedEntityManagerCreator$ExtendedEntityManagerInvocationHandler.invoke(ExtendedEntityManagerCreator.java:341)
    at $Proxy26.flush(Unknown Source)
    at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GenericJPADao.saveOrUpdate(GenericJPADao.java:646)
    at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao.save(GroupDao.java:641)
    at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao$$FastClassByCGLIB$$50343b9b.invoke()
    at net.sf.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invoke(MethodProxy.java:149)
    at org.springframework.aop.framework.Cglib2AopProxy$DynamicAdvisedInterceptor.intercept(Cglib2AopProxy.java:622)
    at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDao$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$7359ba58.save()
    at mil.navy.ndms.conops.common.dao.impl.jpa.GroupDaoTest.testGroupDaoSave(GroupDaoTest.java:91)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:48)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:37)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:600)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.runTest(TestCase.java:164)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:130)
    at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:106)
    at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:124)
    at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:109)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:120)
    at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:230)
    at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:225)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.junit3.JUnit3TestReference.run(JUnit3TestReference.java:130)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.TestExecution.run(TestExecution.java:38)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:460)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:673)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:386)
    at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:196)

In addition, I get the following warnings when Spring first starts. Since these reference the entityManagerFactory and the transactionManager, they probably have some bearing on the problem, but I've no been able to decipher them enough to know what:

Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization
INFO: Bean 'entityManagerFactory' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)
Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization
INFO: Bean 'entityManagerFactory' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)
Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization
INFO: Bean 'jpaTransactionManager' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)
Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization
INFO: Bean '(inner bean)' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)
Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization
INFO: Bean '(inner bean)' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)
Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization
INFO: Bean 'org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)
Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext$BeanPostProcessorChecker postProcessAfterInitialization
INFO: Bean 'org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor' is not eligible for getting processed by all BeanPostProcessors (for example: not eligible for auto-proxying)
Mar 11, 2010 12:19:27 PM org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory preInstantiateSingletons
INFO: Pre-instantiating singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@37003700: defining beans [groupDao,org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.RequiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor,org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor,entityManagerFactory,jpaTransactionManager,org.springframework.aop.config.internalAutoProxyCreator,org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor]; root of factory hierarchy

Does anyone have any idea what I'm missing? I'm totally stumped...

Thanks

Answer 1

The problem is likely caused by a combination of you annotating a protected method, and using proxy-target-class="true". That's a bad mix. The transactional proxy generated by Spring will only work properly with public annotated methods, but it won't complain if they're not.

Try either making the saveOrUpdate() method public or, better yet, define an interface for your DAO, and remove the proxy-target-class="true" setting. This is the safest, most predictable technique.

Answer 2

The instance of entity manager obtained from EntityManagerFactory.createEntityManager() doesn't participate in Spring-managed transactions.

The usual way to obtain an entity manager is to inject it using @PersistenceContext-annotated property:

@PersistenceContext
public void setEntityManager(EntityManager em) { ... }

Answer 3

When you do a getBean() on a class (without interface) with @Transactional specified on a public method, you can see the cglib proxy on the method but all dependencies set in the config.xml are nulls (obviously with proxy-target-class="true"). So is there no way to access transaction annotated beans without interfaces using getBean()?