Spring @Transaction method call by the method within the same class, does not work?

Question

I am new to Spring Transaction. Something that I found really odd, probably I did understand this properly.

I wanted to have a transactional around method level and I have a caller method within the same class and it seems like it does not like that, it has to be called from the separate class. I don't understand how is that possible.

If anyone has an idea how to resolve this issue, I would greatly appreciate. I would like to use the same class to call the annotated transactional method.

Here is the code:

public class UserService {

    @Transactional
    public boolean addUser(String userName, String password) {
        try {
            // call DAO layer and adds to database.
        } catch (Throwable e) {
            TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus()
                    .setRollbackOnly();

        }
    }

    public boolean addUsers(List<User> users) {
        for (User user : users) {
            addUser(user.getUserName, user.getPassword);
        }
    } 
}

Answer 1

It's a limitation of Spring AOP (dynamic objects and cglib).

If you configure Spring to use AspectJ to handle the transactions, your code will work.

The simple and probably best alternative is to refactor your code. For example one class that handles users and one that process each user. Then default transaction handling with Spring AOP will work.

---

Configuration tips for handling transactions with AspectJ

To enable Spring to use AspectJ for transactions, you must set the mode to AspectJ:

<tx:annotation-driven mode="aspectj"/>

If you're using Spring with an older version than 3.0, you must also add this to your Spring configuration:

<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.aspectj
        .AnnotationTransactionAspect" factory-method="aspectOf">
    <property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager" />
</bean>