If Spring can successfully intercept intra class function calls in a @Configuration class, why does it not support it in a regular bean?

Question

I have recently noticed that Spring successfully intercepts intra class function calls in a @Configuration class but not in a regular bean.

A call like this

@Repository
public class CustomerDAO {  
    @Transactional(value=TxType.REQUIRED)
    public void saveCustomer() {
        // some DB stuff here...
        saveCustomer2();
    }
    @Transactional(value=TxType.REQUIRES_NEW)
    public void saveCustomer2() {
        // more DB stuff here
    }
}

fails to start a new transaction because while the code of saveCustomer() executes in the CustomerDAO proxy, the code of saveCustomer2() gets executed in the unwrapped CustomerDAO class, as I can see by looking at 'this' in the debugger, and so Spring has no chance to intercept the call to saveCustomer2.

However, in the following example, when transactionManager() calls createDataSource() it is correctly intercepted and calls createDataSource() of the proxy, not of the unwrapped class, as evidenced by looking at 'this' in the debugger.

@Configuration
public class PersistenceJPAConfig {
    @Bean
    public DriverManagerDataSource createDataSource() {
        DriverManagerDataSource dataSource = new DriverManagerDataSource();
        //dataSource.set ... DB stuff here
        return dataSource;
    }

   @Bean 
       public PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager(   ){
           DataSourceTransactionManager transactionManager = new DataSourceTransactionManager(createDataSource());
           return transactionManager;
       }
}

So my question is, why can Spring correctly intercept the intra class function calls in the second example, but not in the first. Is it using different types of dynamic proxies?

Edit: From the answers here and other sources I now understand the following: @Transactional is implemented using Spring AOP, where the proxy pattern is carried out by wrapping/composition of the user class. The AOP proxy is generic enough so that many Aspects can be chained together, and may be a CGLib proxy or a Java Dynamic Proxy.

In the @Configuration class, Spring also uses CGLib to create an enhanced class which inherits from the user @Configuration class, and overrides the user's @Bean functions with ones that do some extra work before calling the user's/super function such as check if this is the first invocation of the function or not. Is this class a proxy? It depends on the definition. You may say that it is a proxy which uses inheritance from the real object instead of wrapping it using composition.

To sum up, from the answers given here I understand these are two entirely different mechanisms. Why these design choices were made is another, open question.

Answer 1

Is it using different types of dynamic proxies?

Almost exactly

Let's figure out what's the difference between @Configuration classes and AOP proxies answering the following questions:

1. Why self-invoked @Transactional method has no transactional semantics even though Spring is capable of intercepting self-invoked methods?
2. How @Configuration and AOP are related?

Why self-invoked @Transactional method has no transactional semantics?

Short answer:

This is how AOP made.

Long answer:

1. Declarative transaction management relies on AOP (for the majority of Spring applications on Spring AOP)

The Spring Framework’s declarative transaction management is made possible with Spring aspect-oriented programming (AOP)

2. It is proxy-based (§5.8.1. Understanding AOP Proxies)

Spring AOP is proxy-based.

From the same paragraph SimplePojo.java:

public class SimplePojo implements Pojo {

    public void foo() {
        // this next method invocation is a direct call on the 'this' reference
        this.bar();
    }

    public void bar() {
        // some logic...
    }
}

And a snippet proxying it:

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(new SimplePojo());
        factory.addInterface(Pojo.class);
        factory.addAdvice(new RetryAdvice());

        Pojo pojo = (Pojo) factory.getProxy();
        // this is a method call on the proxy!
        pojo.foo();
    }
}

The key thing to understand here is that the client code inside the main(..) method of the Main class has a reference to the proxy.

This means that method calls on that object reference are calls on the proxy.

As a result, the proxy can delegate to all of the interceptors (advice) that are relevant to that particular method call.

However, once the call has finally reached the target object (the SimplePojo, reference in this case), any method calls that it may make on itself, such as this.bar() or this.foo(), are going to be invoked against the this reference, and not the proxy.

This has important implications. It means that self-invocation is not going to result in the advice associated with a method invocation getting a chance to execute.

(Key parts are emphasized.)

You may think that aop works as follows:

Imagine we have a Foo class which we want to proxy:

Foo.java:

public class Foo {
  public int getInt() {
    return 42;
  }
}

There is nothing special. Just getInt method returning 42

An interceptor:

Interceptor.java:

public interface Interceptor {
  Object invoke(InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo);
}

LogInterceptor.java (for demonstration):

public class LogInterceptor implements Interceptor {
  @Override
  public Object invoke(InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo) {
    System.out.println("log. before");
    try {
      return interceptingFoo.getInt();
    } finally {
      System.out.println("log. after");
    }
  }
}

InvokeTargetInterceptor.java:

public class InvokeTargetInterceptor implements Interceptor {
  @Override
  public Object invoke(InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo) {
    try {
      System.out.println("Invoking target");
      Object targetRetVal = interceptingFoo.method.invoke(interceptingFoo.target);
      System.out.println("Target returned " + targetRetVal);
      return targetRetVal;
    } catch (Throwable t) {
      throw new RuntimeException(t);
    } finally {
      System.out.println("Invoked target");
    }
  }
}

Finally InterceptingFoo.java:

public class InterceptingFoo extends Foo {
  public Foo target;
  public List<Interceptor> interceptors = new ArrayList<>();
  public int index = 0;
  public Method method;

  @Override
  public int getInt() {
    try {
      Interceptor interceptor = interceptors.get(index++);
      return (Integer) interceptor.invoke(this);
    } finally {
      index--;
    }
  }
}

Wiring everything together:

public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable {
  Foo target = new Foo();
  InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo = new InterceptingFoo();
  interceptingFoo.method = Foo.class.getDeclaredMethod("getInt");
  interceptingFoo.target = target;
  interceptingFoo.interceptors.add(new LogInterceptor());
  interceptingFoo.interceptors.add(new InvokeTargetInterceptor());

  interceptingFoo.getInt();
  interceptingFoo.getInt();
}

Will print:

log. before
Invoking target
Target returned 42
Invoked target
log. after
log. before
Invoking target
Target returned 42
Invoked target
log. after

Now let's take a look at ReflectiveMethodInvocation.

Here is a part of its proceed method:

Object interceptorOrInterceptionAdvice = this.interceptorsAndDynamicMethodMatchers.get(++this.currentInterceptorIndex);

++this.currentInterceptorIndex should look familiar now

• Here is the target
• And there are interceptors
• the method
• the index

You may try introducing several aspects into your application and see the stack growing at the proceed method when advised method is invoked

Finally everything ends up at MethodProxy.

From its invoke method javadoc:

Invoke the original method, on a different object of the same type.

And as I mentioned previously documentation:

once the call has finally reached the target object any method calls that it may make on itself are going to be invoked against the this reference, and not the proxy

I hope now, more or less, it's clear why.

How @Configuration and AOP are related?

The answer is they are not related.

So Spring here is free to do whatever it wants. Here it is not tied to the proxy AOP semantics.

It enhances such classes using ConfigurationClassEnhancer.

Take a look at:

• CALLBACKS
• BeanMethodInterceptor
• BeanFactoryAwareMethodInterceptor

Returning to the question

If Spring can successfully intercept intra class function calls in a @Configuration class, why does it not support it in a regular bean?

I hope from technical point of view it is clear why.

Now my thoughts from non-technical side:

I think it is not done because Spring AOP is here long enough...

Since Spring Framework 5 the Spring WebFlux framework has been introduced.

Currently Spring Team is working hard towards enhancing reactive programming model

See some notable recent blog posts:

• Reactive Transactions with Spring
• Spring Data R2DBC 1.0 M2 and Spring Boot starter released
• Going Reactive with Spring, Coroutines and Kotlin Flow

More and more features towards less-proxying approach of building Spring applications are introduced. (see this commit for example)

So I think that even though it might be possible to do what you've described it is far from Spring Team's #1 priority for now

Answer 2

Because AOP proxies and @Configuration class serve a different purpose, and are implemented in a significantly different ways (even though both involve using proxies). Basically, AOP uses composition while @Configuration uses inheritance.

AOP proxies

The way these work is basically that they create proxies that do the relevant advice logic before/after delegating the call to the original (proxied) object. The container registers this proxy instead of the proxied object itself, so all dependencies are set to this proxy and all calls from one bean to another go through this proxy. However, the proxied object itself has no pointer to the proxy (it doesn't know it's proxied, only the proxy has a pointer to the target object). So any calls within that object to other methods don't go through the proxy.

_{(I'm only adding this here for contrast with @Configuration, since you seem to have correct understanding of this part.)}

@Configuration

Now while the objects that you usually apply the AOP proxy to are a standard part of your application, the @Configuration class is different - for one, you probably never intend to create any instances of that class directly yourself. This class truly is just a way to write configuration of the bean container, has no meaning outside Spring and you know that it will be used by Spring in a special way and that it has some special semantics outside of just plain Java code - e.g. that @Bean-annotated methods actually define Spring beans.

Because of this, Spring can do much more radical things to this class without worrying that it will break something in your code (remember, you know that you only provide this class for Spring, and you aren't going to ever create or use its instance directly).

What it actually does is it creates a proxy that's subclass of the @Configuration class. This way, it can intercept invocation of every (non-final non-private) method of the @Configuration class, even within the same object (because the methods are effectively all overriden by the proxy, and Java has all the methods virtual). The proxy does exactly this to redirect any method calls that it recognizes to be (semantically) references to Spring beans to the actual bean instances instead of invoking the superclass method.