Hibernate cannot find session bound to thread when using @PostConstruct

Question

I'm reworking an older Spring project to more reflect how things are supposed to be done in Spring 3.0.x.

One of the changes I made was to the repository/dao layer. As advised by best practices, I no longer extend from HibernateDaoSupport to use the HibernateTemplate, but instead I use the Hibernate SessionFactory directly by using sessionFactory.getCurrentSession(), which is supposed to work with Spring 3.0.x and above.

This has been a very big boon for the project as a whole, as it gets rid of all of the wrapping code caused by HibernateTemplate. However, I just noticed that I can no longer call into Service methods that were using @PostConstruct (or were using the bean's onStartUp attribute in the XML application context)

For example, this method used to work just fine using HibernateTemplate, but now Hibernate throws an exception complaining that there is no session bound to the thread:

@Override
@PostConstruct
public void onStartUp() {
    logger.debug("Starting Bootstrap Service...");

    createSysAdminUser();
    createDefaultRoles();
    createDefaultThemes();

    createStopListIfDoesNotExist();
    stopListService.load();

    partialMappingService.load();
    dictionaryService.load();
}

I could just remove this @PostConstruct method call... it's the only one in the system. It is called when the application starts up to bootstrap data for a new application. Most of the time, it does nothing on a production system, but it's handy to have it for test and development databases that were created fresh.

Any ideas as to why and how I can fix it?

Thanks!

EDIT: Here is my transaction manage advice config:

<aop:config>
    <aop:advisor advice-ref="transactionAdvice"
                 pointcut="execution(* *..service.*.*(..))" order="1"/>
    <!-- gets sub packages like service.user -->
    <aop:advisor advice-ref="transactionAdvice"
                 pointcut="execution(* *..service.*.*.*(..))" order="2"/>
</aop:config>

<tx:advice id="transactionAdvice" transaction-manager="transactionManager">
    <tx:attributes>
        <tx:method name="find*" read-only="true" propagation="REQUIRED"/>
        <tx:method name="get*" read-only="true" propagation="REQUIRED"/>
        <tx:method name="*" propagation="REQUIRED"/>
    </tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

I think, it is because the `@PostConstruct` call does not go through the transaction management system. It is the responsibility of the transaction manager to bound the session to each thread and the session factory always uses the bounded session. — Arun P Johny, Feb 19 '13 at 03:36

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '13 at 05:20

1

As outlined in the HibernateDaoSupport class docs, "This class will create its own HibernateTemplate instance if a SessionFactory is passed in. The 'allowCreate' flag on that HibernateTemplate will be 'true' by default." That means that under the old system, your DAOs could open sessions on demand without being under any kind of real control.

When Spring is managing the SessionFactory, it installs a SpringSessionContext as Hibernate's CurrentSessionContext. Now when you call SessionFactory.getCurrentSession(), the SpringSessionContext looks in a Spring-managed ThreadLocal for a Session and fails if it's not there. A Session is typically opened and placed there in one of two ways: using the open-session-in-view pattern does it upon each new request, and starting a transaction does so, too. In your case, you're not executing code in response to a request, so OSIV isn't in play, and you apparently aren't in an active transaction, either. Making the method transactional will take care of your problem.

answered Feb 19 '13 at 05:20

Ryan Stewart

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Should my advice be catching this? I edited my original question to include the transaction advice config. – egervari Feb 19 '13 at 16:41
I guess that depends on whether that bean matches one of your pointcut expressions. You seem to be trying to apply transaction advice to anything that's in a "service" package or one of its subpackages. – Ryan Stewart Feb 20 '13 at 04:16
Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing - or at least trying to do. It doesn't seem to work in this service though (it's called BootstrapService, and it's in the service package). – egervari Feb 21 '13 at 00:47
It's been a while since I looked at Spring's code for initting beans, but it makes sense that the `@PostConstruct` would make it call the method directly on your service object rather than on the proxy created by the transaction advice, so the call isn't actually going through the transaction code. A more appropriate design, in any case, would be to have some kind of startup listener, where the `@PostConstruct` lives, that calls your BootstrapService. Then there's more appropriate separation of concerns, and the call will go through the transaction proxy. – Ryan Stewart Feb 21 '13 at 01:22

Hibernate cannot find session bound to thread when using @PostConstruct

1 Answers1