Cause of No suitable driver found for

Question

I'm trying to unit test (JUnit) a DAO i've created. I'm using Spring as my framework, my DAO (JdbcPackageDAO) extends SimpleJdbcDaoSupport. The testing class (JdbcPackageDAOTest) extends AbstractTransactionalDataSourceSpringContextTests. I've overridden the configLocations as follows:

protected String[] getConfigLocations(){
    return new String[] {"classpath:company/dc/test-context.xml"};
}

My test-context.xml file is defined as follows:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">

    <bean id="dataPackageDao" class="company.data.dao.JdbcPackageDAO">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
        <property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"/>
        <property name="url" value="jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost"/>
        <property name="username" value="sa" />
        <property name="password" value="" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="propertyConfigurer" 
          class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
        <property name="locations">
            <list>
                <value>company/data/dao/jdbc.properties</value>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="transactionManager" 
          class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    </bean>
</beans>

I'm using HSQL as my backend, it's running in standalone mode. My IDE of choice is eclipse. When I run the class as a JUnit test here's my error (below). I have no clue as to why its happening. hsql.jar is on my build path according to Eclipse.

org.springframework.transaction.CannotCreateTransactionException: Could not open JDBC Connection for transaction; nested exception is java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver found for jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost
    at org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager.doBegin(DataSourceTransactionManager.java:219)
    at org.springframework.transaction.support.AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.getTransaction(AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.java:377)
    at org.springframework.test.AbstractTransactionalSpringContextTests.startNewTransaction(AbstractTransactionalSpringContextTests.java:387)
    at org.springframework.test.AbstractTransactionalSpringContextTests.onSetUp(AbstractTransactionalSpringContextTests.java:217)
    at org.springframework.test.AbstractSingleSpringContextTests.setUp(AbstractSingleSpringContextTests.java:101)
    at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:128)
    at org.springframework.test.ConditionalTestCase.runBare(ConditionalTestCase.java:76)
    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)
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver found for jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Unknown Source)
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(Unknown Source)
    at org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource.getConnectionFromDriverManager(DriverManagerDataSource.java:291)
    at org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource.getConnectionFromDriverManager(DriverManagerDataSource.java:277)
    at org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource.getConnectionFromDriverManager(DriverManagerDataSource.java:259)
    at org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource.getConnection(DriverManagerDataSource.java:241)
    at org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager.doBegin(DataSourceTransactionManager.java:182)
    ... 18 more

Answer 1

In order to have HSQLDB register itself, you need to access its jdbcDriver class. You can do this the same way as in this example.

Class.forName("org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver");

It triggers static initialization of jdbcDriver class, which is:

static {
    try {
        DriverManager.registerDriver(new jdbcDriver());
    } catch (Exception e) {}
}

Answer 2

"no suitable driver" usually means that the syntax for the connection URL is incorrect.