Why does Spring Boot BatchAutoConfiguration prevent repositories from saving during integration test? - spring

Question

In my spring boot project, having parent spring-cloud-starter-parent Bristxon-M4, I have encountered a problem in my integration tests when adding this to a test class:
#ImportAutoConfiguration({BatchAutoConfiguration.class})
My problem is that I do not fully understand the startup sequence and in which order the configurations are loaded - at least I suspect that is my problem.
The behaviour I am observing is that when I try to save two different #Entity objects which have a #ManyToOne(optional=false) relation in the #Before method of another test, it fails with this message:
Attempting to save one or more entities that have a non-nullable association with an unsaved transient entity. The unsaved transient entity must be saved in an operation prior to saving these dependent entities.
My setup is as follows:
Code snippets from the application:
#Configuration
#EnableBatchProcessing
public class CollectionBatchJobConfiguration ...
#SpringBootApplication
#EnableScheduling
#EnableJms
#EnableCircuitBreaker
public class MyServiceApplication
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
SpringApplication.run(MyServiceApplication.class, args);
}
}
Code snippets from the test packages:
#Configuration
#ImportAutoConfiguration({BatchAutoConfiguration.class, CollectionBatchJobConfiguration.class, RepositoryTestConfiguration.class})
public class CollectionBatchJobTestConfiguration
{
#Autowired
#Bean
public JobLauncherTestUtils jobLauncherTestUtils()
{
return new JobLauncherTestUtils();
}
...
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#SpringApplicationConfiguration(CollectionBatchJobTestConfiguration.class)
public class CollectionBatchJobIT
{
#Autowired
private JobLauncherTestUtils jobLauncherTestUtils;
...
#Configuration
#ImportAutoConfiguration({
DataSourceAutoConfiguration.class,
HibernateJpaAutoConfiguration.class,
JpaRepositoriesAutoConfiguration.class,
FlywayAutoConfiguration.class})
public class RepositoryTestConfiguration ...
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes = MyServiceApplication.class)
#DirtiesContext(classMode = ClassMode.AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD)
#WebIntegrationTest
public class MyRestServiceIT
{
#Autowired
private EntityARepository entityARepo;
#Autowired
private EntityBRepository entityBRepo;
#Before
public void before()
{
EntityA a = new EntityA();
a = entityARepo.save(a);
EntityB b = new EntityB(a);
entityBRepo.save(b); // This line fails with org.hibernate.TransientPropertyValueException
}
...
I am running MariaDB externally and use Flyway to clean and migrate schema with repo tables and tables for Spring Batch. The service works as expected under manuel test and initially when running both the MyRestServiceIT and the CollectionBatchJobIT with the #SpringApplicationConfiguration class set to MyServiceApplication ran and passed all test.
But in my attempt to optimise test execution time and to be more in line with what appears to be Spring Boot best practice for testing, I am slimming down the loaded test configurations and using the new #ImportAutoConfiguration together with custom TestConfiguration classes instead of using the main SpringBootApplication class MyServiceApplication.
I have succeeded in improving my other integration tests but after finishing the CollectionBatchJobIT then the MyRestServiceIT failed in the #Before block with this hibernate error:
org.springframework.dao.InvalidDataAccessApiUsageException: org.hibernate.TransientPropertyValueException: Not-null property references a transient value - transient instance must be saved before current operation :
...
Not-null property references a transient value - transient instance must be saved before current operation
The stacktrace shows that the save invocation is in fact from the #Before block.
When debugging, the save operation of entityA shows the missing ID and the database does not contain the expected row.
So to sum up: After adding the BatchAutoConfiguration to one test, another test fails because it can no longer persist entities to the underlying database.
Can anyone body explain what happens or how I can figure out the reason behind it?
Btw. if the BatchAutoConfiguration is omitted from the #ImportAutoConfiguration line the CollectionBatchJobIT fails because nothing gets committed to the database.

Answer 1

Your problem may stem from the fact that the tests which are using MyServiceApplication for configuration automatically include all your test configuration classes due to component scanning being enabled by the #SpringBootApplication annotation. This is most likely not what you want.
One way to exclude these is to replace #SpringBootApplication with the following under the assumption that your test configuration classes are named accordingly:
#Configuration
#EnableAutoConfiguration
#ComponentScan(excludeFilters = #Filter(type = FilterType.REGEX,
pattern = ".*TestConfiguration.*"))