Spring + Hibernate with annotations: No Hibernate Session bound to thread

Question

I'm new to Spring and I was trying to create a webapp with the following stack: Apache Tomcat 7, MySQL, Spring MVC, Hibernate 3 with JPA annotations.

I am trying to learn by following the book "Spring in Action, Third Edition" by Craig Walls.

First, I wanted to create a page that displays some entries I manually added to my DB, but it looks like my application is not capable of creating/retrieving any Hibernate Session from my SessionFactory. Here is my root cause stack trace:

exception

org.springframework.web.util.NestedServletException: Request processing failed; nested exception is org.hibernate.HibernateException: No Hibernate Session bound to thread, and configuration does not allow creation of non-transactional one here
    org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:656)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:549)
    javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621)
    javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)

root cause

org.hibernate.HibernateException: No Hibernate Session bound to thread, and configuration does not allow creation of non-transactional one here
    org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.SpringSessionContext.currentSession(SpringSessionContext.java:63)
    org.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryImpl.getCurrentSession(SessionFactoryImpl.java:687)
    com.nbarraille.www.dao.HibernateContactDAO.listContact(HibernateContactDAO.java:27)
    com.nbarraille.www.controllers.HomeController.showHomePage(HomeController.java:24)
    sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
    sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:613)
    org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.support.HandlerMethodInvoker.invokeHandlerMethod(HandlerMethodInvoker.java:176)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.invokeHandlerMethod(AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.java:426)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.handle(AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.java:414)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:790)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:719)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:644)
    org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:549)
    javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621)
    javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722)

And here are my concerned Classes/Config files:

My HibernateDAO:

@Repository
public class HibernateContactDAO implements ContactDAO {

    private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

    @Autowired
    public HibernateContactDAO(SessionFactory sessionFactory){
        this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
    }

    public void addContact(Contact contact) {
        sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().save(contact);
    }

    public List<Contact> listContact() {
        @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
        List<Contact> cl = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().createQuery("from Contact").list();
        return cl;
    }

    public void removeContact(Integer id) {
        Contact contact = (Contact) sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().load(Contact.class, id);
        if (null != contact) {
            sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().delete(contact);
        }

    }
}

My Contact class:

@Entity
@Table(name="contacts")
public class Contact implements Serializable {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = -5389913432051078273L;

    @Id
    @Column(name="id")
    @GeneratedValue
    private int id;

    @Column(name="first_name")
    private String firstname;

    @Column(name="last_name")
    private String lastname;

    @Column(name="email")
    private String email;

    @Column(name="telephone")
    private String telephone;


    // Setters/Getters
}

My Controller class:

@Controller

    public class HomeController {

        private ContactDAO contactDAO; // I know I should pass through a service instead of accessing my DAO directly, and I usually do, but I skipped it here to simplify and try to locate the problem

        @Inject
        public HomeController(ContactDAO contactDAO){
            this.contactDAO = contactDAO;
        }

        @RequestMapping({"/", "/home"})
        public String showHomePage(Map<String,Object> model){
            model.put("contacts", contactDAO.listContact());
            return "index";
        }
    }

Here is my Context Data Config file:

<bean id="DBpropertyConfigurer"
    class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
    <property name="location" value="/WEB-INF/jdbc.properties" />
    </bean>

<bean id="dataSource" 
    class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" />
    <property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/nbarraille" />
    <property name="username" value="root" />
    <property name="password" value="password" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="sessionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
        <property name="packagesToScan" value="com.nbarraille.www.core" />
        <property name="hibernateProperties">
            <props>
                <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <!-- Adds an advisor to any bean annotated with @Repository so that any platform-specific exception
         are caught and then rethrown as one of Spring's unchecked data access exceptions -->
    <bean class="org.springframework.dao.annotation.PersistenceExceptionTranslationPostProcessor" />

Here is my Dispatcher Servlet config:

<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**"
                   location="/resources/" />

<mvc:annotation-driven />

<context:component-scan base-package="com.nbarraille.www" />

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesViewResolver" />

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer">
        <property name="definitions">
            <list>
                <value>/WEB-INF/tiles-def.xml</value>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="messageSource"
        class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource">
        <property name="basename" value="classpath:messages" />
        <property name="defaultEncoding" value="UTF-8"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="localeChangeInterceptor"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
        <property name="paramName" value="lang" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="localeResolver"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.CookieLocaleResolver">
        <property name="defaultLocale" value="en"/>
    </bean>

And finally, here is my web.xml file:

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>nbarraille</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>nbarraille</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

 <context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
        /WEB-INF/nbarraille-service.xml
        /WEB-INF/nbarraille-data.xml
        /WEB-INF/nbarraille-security.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>

Answer 1

You don't seem to have transaction configured yet... you can add the following into your Context Data Config file:-

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>

<tx:advice id="txAdvice">
    <tx:attributes>
        <tx:method name="*" propagation="REQUIRED" />
    </tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

<aop:config>
    <aop:advisor pointcut="execution(* YOUR.PACKAGE..*.*(..))" advice-ref="txAdvice" />
</aop:config>

Change YOUR.PACKAGE to your actual package name, for example:-

execution(* com.project..*.*(..))

This is one lazy way to wrap all your methods in your project with transaction.

By the way, if you are going to lazily query your Hibernate domain objects (ex: parent.getChildren()) in your view, then I would highly suggest you to add this into your web.xml:-

<filter>
    <filter-name>hibernateFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.support.OpenSessionInViewFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>hibernateFilter</filter-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

This filter extends Hibernate session to the view.