Spring, JPA transactions works only in JUnit test but not in application

Question

I have a little problem with transactions. I use Spring 3.1.1.RELEASE, Spring Data 1.0.3.RELEASE JPA with Hibernate provider. When I start a junit test where is a method annotated with @Transactional it seems fine but when I start a whole application there are no errors but transactions don't work. Here's my configurations and sample code:

applicationContext.xml

<context:annotation-config />
    <context:component-scan base-package="com.sheedo.upload" />
    <jpa:repositories base-package="com.sheedo.upload.repository" />
    <tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager" />

    <bean
        class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
        <property name="locations">
            <list>
                <value>classpath*:messages/*.properties</value>
                <value>classpath*:*.properties</value>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="entityManagerFactory"
        class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
        <property name="persistenceUnitName" value="persistenceUnit" />
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager">
        <property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="dataSource" class="com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource">
        <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}" />
        <property name="user" value="${jdbc.username}" />
        <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}" />
    </bean>

persistence.xml

<persistence-unit name="persistenceUnit" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
    <provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider>
    <properties>
        <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect" />
        <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="update" />
        <property name="hibernate.ejb.naming_strategy" value="org.hibernate.cfg.ImprovedNamingStrategy" />
        <property name="hibernate.connection.charSet" value="UTF-8" />
        <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true" />
    </properties>
</persistence-unit>

UserRepository.java

public interface UserRepository extends CrudRepository<User, Long>{ }

UserServiceImpl.java

@Service("userService")
public class UserServiceImpl implements UserService {

    @Autowired
    private UserRepository userRepository;

    @Override
    @Transactional
    public void addUser(String name, String surname) {
        User u = new User(name, surname);
        userRepository.save(u);
        throw new RuntimeException(); // to invoke a rollback
    }
}

UserServiceTest.java

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = { "classpath:/META-INF/spring/root-context.xml" })
public class UserServiceTest {

    Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(getClass());

    @Autowired
    private UserService userService;

    @Test
    public void testUserAdd() {
        userService.addUser("John", "Doe");
    }

}

In this case of JUnit test, transaction doesn't work event though the service method is annotated with @Transactional. When I add this annotation to testUserAdd() method I get this in console:

2012-05-17 11:17:54,208 INFO [org.springframework.test.context.transaction.TransactionalTestExecutionListener] - Rolled back transaction after test execution for test context [[TestContext@23ae2a testClass = UserRepositoryTest, testInstance = com.sheedo.upload.repository.UserRepositoryTest@7f52c1, testMethod = testUserAdd@UserRepositoryTest, testException = java.lang.RuntimeException, mergedContextConfiguration = [MergedContextConfiguration@111fd28 testClass = UserRepositoryTest, locations = '{classpath:/META-INF/spring/root-context.xml}', classes = '{}', activeProfiles = '{}', contextLoader = 'org.springframework.test.context.support.DelegatingSmartContextLoader']]]

which is correct I suppose. So, how can be possible that @Transactional annotation works only in Junit test class, but not in others spring beans ?

My theory is that SpringJUnit4ClassRunner somehow provides this transaction. Have I something wrong in my spring configuration that transactions don't work in my app but only in Junit test classes? Something missing in appContext?

Edit: log:

2012-05-17 12:46:10,770 DEBUG [org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager] - Creating new transaction with name [org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.support.SimpleJpaRepository.save]: PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,ISOLATION_DEFAULT; ''
2012-05-17 12:46:10,770 DEBUG [org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager] - Opened new EntityManager [org.hibernate.ejb.EntityManagerImpl@e4080] for JPA transaction
2012-05-17 12:46:10,979 DEBUG [org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager] - Not exposing JPA transaction [org.hibernate.ejb.EntityManagerImpl@e4080] as JDBC transaction because JpaDialect [org.springframework.orm.jpa.DefaultJpaDialect@1f87491] does not support JDBC Connection retrieval
Hibernate: insert into user (name, surname) values (?, ?)
2012-05-17 12:46:11,062 DEBUG [org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager] - Initiating transaction commit
2012-05-17 12:46:11,062 DEBUG [org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager] - Committing JPA transaction on EntityManager [org.hibernate.ejb.EntityManagerImpl@e4080]
2012-05-17 12:46:11,142 DEBUG [org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager] - Closing JPA EntityManager [org.hibernate.ejb.EntityManagerImpl@e4080] after transaction
2012-05-17 12:46:11,142 DEBUG [org.springframework.orm.jpa.EntityManagerFactoryUtils] - Closing JPA EntityManager

Answer 1

I had exactly the same problem. Also, read the solution of adding a <tx:annotation-driven/> tag in my web configuration (spring-servlet.xml, instead of applicationContext.xml), and worked for me.

But I did not consider that a good solution, so I tried to understand why that was happening...

And well, it turned out that a <context:component-scan> tag I had in my spring-servlet.xml was also including the @Service classes in its scan (the base-package specification was too general). This was weird because I had an include-filter in place referring to the @Controller annotation... but anyway, it seems that the application context for the web layer was the one creating the @Service instances instead of the application context created for applicationContext.xml --which is the one defining the business layer--, and as the former didn't have transactionality enabled... I didn't have any transactions.

Solution (good one): better (more specific) component-scan configuration at spring-servlet.xml