Transaction not active in child method of ApplicationContext

Question

I can only get an active programmatic transaction in my spring (3.0.5) jdbc application, running on Oracle 11.2, when the txAdvice points to the actual method (mainTest()) called from the application context (example "AAA" below). If the txAdvice points to a child method (transactionTest()) of mainTest() (example "BBB" below) then I no longer have an active transaction.

Relevant code:

public class MainDS {
    public static Controller cont;
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String [] configList ={"spring.xml"};

        ApplicationContext ctx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(configList);
        cont = (Controller)ctx.getBean("controller");
        cont.mainTest();     
    }
}

public class Controller {
    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;  

    public void mainTest()
    {
        transactionTest();
        // MainDS.cont.transactionTest(); // also does not work
    }

    public void transactionTest(){
        try {
            // This prints "Transaction active = true" for AAA but "Transaction active = false"  for BBB
            System.out.println("Transaction active = " + TransactionSynchronizationManager.isActualTransactionActive() );

        } catch (SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public JdbcTemplate getJdbcTemplate() {
        return jdbcTemplate;
    }

    public void setJdbcTemplate(JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = jdbcTemplate;
    }
}

and my spring.xml file is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-2.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx 
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-2.0.xsd">


<bean id="controller" class="Controller">
    <property name="jdbcTemplate" ref="jdbcTemplate" />
</bean>


<bean id="txManager"
    class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
</bean>

<tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="txManager">
    <tx:attributes>
        <tx:method name="main*" propagation="REQUIRED" />       <!-- AAA -->
        <tx:method name="transaction*" propagation="REQUIRED" />    <!-- or BBB -->
    </tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>



<aop:config>    
    <aop:pointcut id="myMethods" expression="execution(* *..Controller.*(..))" />
    <aop:advisor advice-ref="txAdvice" pointcut-ref="myMethods" />
</aop:config>



<bean id="jdbcTemplate" class="org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
</bean>

<bean id="dataConfigPropertyConfigurer"
    class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
    <property name="searchSystemEnvironment" value="true" />
</bean>

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver" />
    <property name="initialSize" value="2" />
    <property name="maxActive" value="2" />

    <property name="url" value="my connection details" />
    <property name="username" value="xxx" />
    <property name="password" value="xxx" />
</bean>

</beans>

How do I get an active transaction for option BBB. Any ideas very welcome.

Regards DS

Answer 1

"BBB" case: the "mainTest()" method calls directly the "transactionTest()" method, omitting the aspect.

If you want to invoke the dynamically created proxy of the "transactionTest()" method, I suppose, you could do it through self bean reference (injected). Also as far as I remember, the spring manual used to suggest to call such methods via interface references (again using injected interface references).

Note: this is a really bad design! Implementation example (per request):

<bean id="controller" class="test.Controller">
    <property name="jdbcTemplate" ref="jdbcTemplate"/>
    <property name="instance" ref="controller" />
</bean>

public class Controller {
    private JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate;
    private Controller instance;

    public void mainTest() {
        instance.transactionTest();
    }

    public void transactionTest() {
        System.out.println("Transaction active = " + TransactionSynchronizationManager.isActualTransactionActive() );
    }

    public JdbcTemplate getJdbcTemplate() {
        return jdbcTemplate;
    }

    public void setJdbcTemplate(JdbcTemplate jdbcTemplate) {
        this.jdbcTemplate = jdbcTemplate;
    }

    public Controller getInstance() {
        return instance;
    }

    public void setInstance(Controller instance) {
        this.instance = instance;
    }
}

Transaction active = true

This behaviour is well documented in the spring manual (I recall it in the Aspects section), so you should definitely read it: http://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/aop.html section 9.6.1

More over, this question has already been covered here: One Service method invoke inner multiple method for Spring transaction