@Transactional in Spring+Hibernate

Question

I an using Spring 3.1 + Hibernate 4.x in my web application. In my DAO, i am saving User type object as following

sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().save(user);

But getting following exception:

org.hibernate.HibernateException: save is not valid without active transaction

I googled and found similar question on SO, with following solution:

   Session session=getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();
   Transaction trans=session.beginTransaction();
   session.save(entity);
   trans.commit();

That solves the problem. But in that solution, there is lot of mess of beginning and committing the transactions manually.

Can't i use sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().save(user); directly without begin/commit of transactions manually?

I try to use @Transactional on my service/dao methods too, but the problem persists.

EDIT : Here is my Spring Config File:

<?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:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
     xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
     xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
     xsi:schemaLocation="
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.1.xsd
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop 
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.1.xsd">


  <!-- enable the configuration of transactional behavior based on annotations -->
  <tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager"/>

    <bean id="dataSource"
        class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource"
        p:driverClassName="${db.driverClassName}" p:url="${db.url}"
        p:username="${db.username}" p:password="${db.password}" />

    <bean id="sessionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
        <property name="packagesToScan" value="com.myapp.entities" />
        <property name="hibernateProperties">
            <props>
                <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>


    <bean id="txManager"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager">
        <property name="sessionFactory">
            <ref bean="sessionFactory" />
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

I am using following Hibernate 4 dependencies:

<!-- Hibernate Dependency -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
            <version>4.1.7.Final</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-entitymanager</artifactId>
            <version>4.1.1.Final</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>cglib</groupId>
            <artifactId>cglib</artifactId>
            <version>${cglib.version}</version>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>

Please help.

Answer 1

Basically what needs to be done is to remove from the applicationContext.xml file the following line for Hibernate properties:

<prop key="hibernate.current_session_context_class">thread</prop>

Once that is remove, Hibernate makes use of Spring for transaction management

Good luck to you all.

Answer 2

i think you are using Hibernate 4.x then why you are using hibernate 3 transaction manager in application context file?

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

i think it should be

<bean id="txManager"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager">
    <property name="sessionFactory">
        <ref bean="sessionFactory" />
    </property>
</bean>

just try to use hibernate 4 transaction manager along with @Transactional attribute it should work.

Answer 3

Using your working version of the Spring XML, and the @Transactional annotated DAO class, are you defining the DAO in your Spring XML ? (Perhaps as a prototype) Because if you're not, then so far as I can see, your DAO is not going to be AOP'ed for transactional aspects. I think that's the easiest way. This example is from the Spring 3 Doc, section 10.5.6 Using @Transactional.

  <!-- this is the service object that we want to make transactional -->
  <bean id="fooService" class="x.y.service.DefaultFooService"/>

  <!-- enable the configuration of transactional behavior based on annotations -->
  <tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager"/>

...where you might substitute DefaultFooService for your DAO.