Transaction is required to perform this operation (either use a transaction or extended persistence context)

Question

I'm using Wildfly 10.0.0 Final, Java EE7, Maven and JPA 2.1. When I am querying my database for records it works fine and lists out the employees, but when I am trying to persist a new employee it gives me the following exception:

javax.servlet.ServletException: WFLYJPA0060: Transaction is required to perform this operation (either use a transaction or extended persistence context)
javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:671)
io.undertow.servlet.handlers.ServletHandler.handleRequest(ServletHandler.java:85)
io.undertow.servlet.handlers.security.ServletSecurityRoleHandler.handleRequest(ServletSecurityRoleHandler.java:62)
io.undertow.servlet.handlers.ServletDispatchingHandler.handleRequest(ServletDispatchingHandler.java:36)
org.wildfly.extension.undertow.security.SecurityContextAssociationHandler.handleRequest(SecurityContextAssociationHandler.java:78)
io.undertow.server.handlers.PredicateHandler.handleRequest(PredicateHandler.java:43)
io.undertow.servlet.handlers.security.SSLInformationAssociationHandler.handleRequest(SSLInformationAssociationHandler.java:131)
...

I'm trying to implement this using JSF and CDI beans. I have a JTA data source, which I've configured in my persistence.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/persistence" version="2.1">
    <persistence-unit name="MyPersistenceUnit">
        <provider>org.hibernate.jpa.HibernatePersistenceProvider</provider>
        <jta-data-source>java:/EmployeesDS</jta-data-source>
        <class>com.home.entity.Employee</class>
        <properties>
            <property name="hibernate.archive.autodetection" value="class"/>
            <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true"/>
            <property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true"/>
            <property name="hbm2ddl.auto" value="update"/>
            <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect"/>
        </properties>
    </persistence-unit>
</persistence>

The CDI bean can be seen below. It is relatively simple, there is a method to list out 25 employees and another which should persist a specific employee:

@Named
@RequestScoped
public class DataFetchBean {
    @PersistenceContext
    EntityManager em;

    public List getEmployees() {
        Query query = em.createNamedQuery("findEmployees");
        query.setMaxResults(25);
        return query.getResultList();
    }

    public String getEmployeeNameById(final int id) {
        addEmployee();

        Query query = em.createNamedQuery("findEmployeeNameById");
        query.setParameter("empno", id);
        Employee employee = (Employee) query.getSingleResult();
        return employee.getFirstName() + " " + employee.getLastName();
    }

    public void addEmployee() {
        em.persist(new Employee(500000, new Date(335077446), "Josh", "Carribean", 'm', new Date(335077446)));
    }
}

The employee entity class can be found below:

@NamedQueries({
        @NamedQuery(
                name = "findEmployees",
                query = "select e from Employee e"
        ),           
        @NamedQuery(
                name = "findEmployeeNameById",
                query = "select e from Employee e where e.empNo = :empno"
        )
})
@Table(name = "employees")
public class Employee {
    @Id
    @Column(name = "emp_no")
    private int empNo;
    @Basic
    @Column(name = "birth_date")
    private Date birthDate;
    @Basic
    @Column(name = "first_name")
    private String firstName;
    @Basic
    @Column(name = "last_name")
    private String lastName;
    @Basic
    @Column(name = "gender")
    private char gender;
    @Basic
    @Column(name = "hire_date")
    private Date hireDate;

    public Employee() { }

    public int getEmpNo() {
        return empNo;
    }

    public void setEmpNo(int empNo) {
        this.empNo = empNo;
    }

    public Date getBirthDate() {
        return birthDate;
    }

    public void setBirthDate(Date birthDate) {
        this.birthDate = birthDate;
    }

    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }

    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }

    public char getGender() {
        return gender;
    }

    public void setGender(char gender) {
        this.gender = gender;
    }

    public Date getHireDate() {
        return hireDate;
    }

    public void setHireDate(Date hireDate) {
        this.hireDate = hireDate;
    }

    public Employee(int empNo, Date birthDate, String firstName, String lastName, char gender, Date hireDate) {
        this.empNo = empNo;
        this.birthDate = birthDate;
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
        this.gender = gender;
        this.hireDate = hireDate;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) return true;
        if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) return false;

        Employee employee = (Employee) o;

        if (empNo != employee.empNo) return false;
        if (gender != employee.gender) return false;
        if (birthDate != null ? !birthDate.equals(employee.birthDate) : employee.birthDate != null) return false;
        if (firstName != null ? !firstName.equals(employee.firstName) : employee.firstName != null) return false;
        if (lastName != null ? !lastName.equals(employee.lastName) : employee.lastName != null) return false;
        if (hireDate != null ? !hireDate.equals(employee.hireDate) : employee.hireDate != null) return false;

        return true;
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int result = empNo;
        result = 31 * result + (birthDate != null ? birthDate.hashCode() : 0);
        result = 31 * result + (firstName != null ? firstName.hashCode() : 0);
        result = 31 * result + (lastName != null ? lastName.hashCode() : 0);
        result = 31 * result + (int) gender;
        result = 31 * result + (hireDate != null ? hireDate.hashCode() : 0);
        return result;
    }
}

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

An alternate way to handle this is to use the annotation @Transactional on your DataFetchBean's method addEmployee. Then you don't need the UserTransaction and can use AOP to manage the transaction.

This was a new feature added in JTA 1.2.

Answer 2

Basically one is in the presence of a container managed JTA aware persistence context with bean managed transactions (BMT).

Therefore, besides your EntityManager you should also inject, into your DataFetchBean, your UserTransaction, in order to begin, commit or rollback a transaction.

@Named
@RequestScoped
public class DataFetchBean {
    @PersistenceContext
    EntityManager em;

    @Resource
    private UserTransaction userTransaction;

    ...
}

Then, in your addEmployee method, you've to begin and then commit your transaction, so your changes to your employee entity can be propagated to the database.

public void addEmployee() throws Exception {
    Employee employee = new Employee(500000, new Date(335077446), "Josh", "Carribean", 'm', new Date(335077446));

    userTransaction.begin();
    em.persist(employee);
    userTransaction.commit();
}

In spite of this, you should think about migrating the database actions into an EJB, injecting it into your JSF bean, therefore delegating on the container the onus of managing the transactions, i.e. make use of CMT, instead of manually handling them.