Why won't the transaction start in my junit test cases? - spring

Question

I have a Spring 3.1 MVC + Hibernate 3.6 project with its junit4 test suit. My problem is that there is no transaction starting in my test cases, even thought I added a #Transactional.
My test case calls a controller and a dao. In the controller, a transaction is started anyway, so it does not complain. In the dao, I added a #Transactional(propagation = Propagation.MANDATORY) to be sure it will take the test's transaction. And currently it raises an IllegalTransactionStateException, which I guess it means there is no current transaction.
I tried to create programmaticaly an transaction and it does work, which means the AOP proxy to get the dao service is not the cause of the problem. However I want to create a transaction with the #Transactional annotation.
here's my dao:
// ...imports...
#Repository("taskDao")
#Transactional(propagation = Propagation.MANDATORY)
public class TaskHome implements TaskDao {
private static final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(TaskHome.class);
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
#Autowired
public TaskHome(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
}
public Task findById(int id) {
log.debug("getting Task instance with id: " + id);
try {
Task instance = (Task) this.sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().get(
Task.class, id); // exception raised here!
if (instance == null) {
log.debug("get successful, no instance found");
} else {
log.debug("get successful, instance found");
}
return instance;
} catch (RuntimeException re) {
log.error("get failed", re);
throw re;
}
}
...
}
Here's my test case:
// ...imports...
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#ContextConfiguration({ "/test-config.xml", "/applicationContext.xml" })
#TransactionConfiguration(defaultRollback = true)
#Transactional
public class TestTaskController {
private static ClassPathXmlApplicationContext context;
private static TaskDao taskDao;
#BeforeClass
public static void initHibernate() throws Exception {
context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
taskDao = context.getBean("taskDao", TaskDao.class);
}
#Test
public void testOnSubmit() {
// expects an existing default transaction here
Task task = taskDao.findById(1); // fails already here
// ... calls the controller and does some tests.
}
}
I searched in all Spring's documentation and googled it in any way I could imagine, but I don't see why the transaction is not started.
Any help is very welcome.

Answer 1

When using #RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class) you should obtain beans from the application context created by SpringJUnit4ClassRunner rather than from your own one.
In your case things go wrong because #Transactional on the unit test creates a transaction in the application context managed by SpringJUnit4ClassRunner, but you call methods on the beans obtained from the application context created manually.
So, remove your #BeforeClass method and obtain TaskDao via autowiring:
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#ContextConfiguration({ "/test-config.xml", "/applicationContext.xml" })
#TransactionConfiguration(defaultRollback = true)
#Transactional
public class TestTaskController {
#Autowired
private TaskDao taskDao;
...
}
See also:
9.3.5 Spring TestContext Framework