Method must be called outside of transactional context - Spring @Transactional

Question

I hope you're well.

I would like to find the best way to ensure that a service method is called outside of a transaction. It would be as follows:

Lets say that we have a method in the form of:

@Transactional
public void insertEntity(Entity entity){
    persistence.save(entity);
}

Now, lets say that we are invoking this method, but we need to be sure that is not called inside code that is transactional already. Following would be wrong:

@Transactional
public void enclosingTransaction() {
    //Perform long process transaction
    service.insertEntity(entity);
}

What is the best option to make our method "insertEntity" aware that is being called inside a running transaction and throw error?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could invoke TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().isNewTransaction() method in order to know if the current transaction is new (i.e. it was not propagated from another @Transactional method) or not:

@Transactional
public void insertEntity(Entity entity){
    if (!TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().isNewTransaction()) {
        throw new IllegalStateException("Transaction is not new!");
    }
    persistence.save(entity);
}

The static method TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus() returns a TransactionStatus object which represents the transaction status of the current method invocation.

---

I wrote a minimal Spring MVC webapp to test your scenario (I'm omitting configuration classes and files, as well as import and packages declarations):

TestController.java

@RestController
public class TestController {

    private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(TestController.class);

    @Autowired
    private ServiceOne serviceOne;

    @Autowired
    private ServiceTwo serviceTwo;

    @GetMapping(path = "/test-transactions")
    public String testTransactions() {
        log.info("*** TestController.testTransactions() ***");
        log.info("* Invoking serviceOne.methodOne()...");
        try {
            serviceOne.methodOne();
        }
        catch (IllegalStateException e) {
            log.error("* {} invoking serviceOne.methodOne()!", e.getClass().getSimpleName());
        }
        log.info("* Invoking serviceTwo.methodTwo()...");
        try {
            serviceTwo.methodTwo();
        }
        catch (IllegalStateException e) {
            log.error("* {} invoking serviceTwo.methodTwo()!", e.getClass().getSimpleName());
        }
        return "OK";
    }
}

ServiceOneImpl.java

@Service
public class ServiceOneImpl implements ServiceOne {

    private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ServiceOneImpl.class);

    @Autowired
    private ServiceTwo serviceTwo;

    @PersistenceContext
    private EntityManager em;

    @Override
    @Transactional(propagation = Propagation.REQUIRED)
    public void methodOne() {
        log.info("*** ServiceOne.methodOne() ***");
        log.info("getCurrentTransactionName={}", TransactionSynchronizationManager.getCurrentTransactionName());
        log.info("isNewTransaction={}", TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().isNewTransaction());
        log.info("Query result={}", em.createNativeQuery("SELECT 1").getResultList());
        log.info("getCurrentTransactionName={}", TransactionSynchronizationManager.getCurrentTransactionName());
        log.info("isNewTransaction={}", TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().isNewTransaction());
        serviceTwo.methodTwo();
    }
}

ServiceTwoImpl.java

@Service
public class ServiceTwoImpl implements ServiceTwo {

    private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ServiceTwoImpl.class);

    @PersistenceContext
    private EntityManager em;

    @Override
    @Transactional(propagation = Propagation.REQUIRED)
    public void methodTwo() {
        log.info("*** ServiceTwo.methodTwo() ***");
        log.info("getCurrentTransactionName={}", TransactionSynchronizationManager.getCurrentTransactionName());
        log.info("isNewTransaction={}", TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().isNewTransaction());
        if (!TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().isNewTransaction()) {
            log.warn("Throwing exception because transaction is not new...");
            throw new IllegalStateException("Transaction is not new!");
        }
        log.info("Query result={}", em.createNativeQuery("SELECT 2").getResultList());
        log.info("getCurrentTransactionName={}", TransactionSynchronizationManager.getCurrentTransactionName());
        log.info("isNewTransaction={}", TransactionAspectSupport.currentTransactionStatus().isNewTransaction());
    }
}

And here it is the log of the execution:

INFO test.transactions.web.TestController - *** TestController.testTransactions() ***
INFO test.transactions.web.TestController - * Invoking serviceOne.methodOne()...
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl - *** ServiceOne.methodOne() ***
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl - getCurrentTransactionName=test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl.methodOne
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl - isNewTransaction=true
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl - Query result=[1]
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl - getCurrentTransactionName=test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl.methodOne
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl - isNewTransaction=true
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - *** ServiceTwo.methodTwo() ***
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - getCurrentTransactionName=test.transactions.service.ServiceOneImpl.methodOne
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - isNewTransaction=false
WARN test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - Throwing exception because transaction is not new...
ERROR test.transactions.web.TestController - * IllegalStateException invoking serviceOne.methodOne()!
INFO test.transactions.web.TestController - * Invoking serviceTwo.methodTwo()...
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - *** ServiceTwo.methodTwo() ***
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - getCurrentTransactionName=test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl.methodTwo
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - isNewTransaction=true
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - Query result=[2]
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - getCurrentTransactionName=test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl.methodTwo
INFO test.transactions.service.ServiceTwoImpl - isNewTransaction=true