Custom Shortcut Annotations for @Transactional not working

Question

I am trying to create custom annotations in order to shortcut, just as referenced in the documentation:

   @Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.TYPE})
   @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
   @Transactional("order")
   public @interface OrderTx {
   }

However when I annotate methods with the custom annotation, I get an exception:

No hibernate session bound to thread, and configuration does not allow creation...

etc. While annotating the method with @Transactional works perfectly.

Since the method that I am annotating does not belong a Bean instantiated from the Application Context, my guess is that the AnnotationTransactionAspect is not working with custom Annotations, and AOP magic is not working.

How can I get custom annotations that shortcut transactions and work everywhere?

Am I missing something else?

Answer 1

Here are the pointcuts used in AnnotationTransactionAspect:

/**
 * Matches the execution of any public method in a type with the
 * Transactional annotation, or any subtype of a type with the
 * Transactional annotation.
 */
private pointcut executionOfAnyPublicMethodInAtTransactionalType() :
    execution(public * ((@Transactional *)+).*(..)) && @this(Transactional);

/**
 * Matches the execution of any method with the 
 * Transactional annotation.
 */
private pointcut executionOfTransactionalMethod() :
    execution(* *(..)) && @annotation(Transactional);

I'd say it's pretty clear that meta-annotations aren't matched (and I don't even think there is a valid aspectj pointcut that could catch meta-annotations). So I guess you'll have to subclass AbstractTransactionAspect and provide your own implementation for this pointcut to catch your custom annotation:

/**
 * Concrete subaspects must implement this pointcut, to identify
 * transactional methods. For each selected joinpoint, TransactionMetadata
 * will be retrieved using Spring's TransactionAttributeSource interface.
 */
protected abstract pointcut transactionalMethodExecution(Object txObject);