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If Spring can successfully intercept intra class function calls in a #Configuration class, why does it not support it in a regular bean?

I have recently noticed that Spring successfully intercepts intra class function calls in a #Configuration class but not in a regular bean.
A call like this
#Repository
public class CustomerDAO {
#Transactional(value=TxType.REQUIRED)
public void saveCustomer() {
// some DB stuff here...
saveCustomer2();
}
#Transactional(value=TxType.REQUIRES_NEW)
public void saveCustomer2() {
// more DB stuff here
}
}
fails to start a new transaction because while the code of saveCustomer() executes in the CustomerDAO proxy, the code of saveCustomer2() gets executed in the unwrapped CustomerDAO class, as I can see by looking at 'this' in the debugger, and so Spring has no chance to intercept the call to saveCustomer2.
However, in the following example, when transactionManager() calls createDataSource() it is correctly intercepted and calls createDataSource() of the proxy, not of the unwrapped class, as evidenced by looking at 'this' in the debugger.
#Configuration
public class PersistenceJPAConfig {
#Bean
public DriverManagerDataSource createDataSource() {
DriverManagerDataSource dataSource = new DriverManagerDataSource();
//dataSource.set ... DB stuff here
return dataSource;
}
#Bean
public PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager( ){
DataSourceTransactionManager transactionManager = new DataSourceTransactionManager(createDataSource());
return transactionManager;
}
}
So my question is, why can Spring correctly intercept the intra class function calls in the second example, but not in the first. Is it using different types of dynamic proxies?
Edit:
From the answers here and other sources I now understand the following:
#Transactional is implemented using Spring AOP, where the proxy pattern is carried out by wrapping/composition of the user class. The AOP proxy is generic enough so that many Aspects can be chained together, and may be a CGLib proxy or a Java Dynamic Proxy.
In the #Configuration class, Spring also uses CGLib to create an enhanced class which inherits from the user #Configuration class, and overrides the user's #Bean functions with ones that do some extra work before calling the user's/super function such as check if this is the first invocation of the function or not. Is this class a proxy? It depends on the definition. You may say that it is a proxy which uses inheritance from the real object instead of wrapping it using composition.
To sum up, from the answers given here I understand these are two entirely different mechanisms. Why these design choices were made is another, open question.

Is it using different types of dynamic proxies?
Almost exactly
Let's figure out what's the difference between #Configuration classes and AOP proxies answering the following questions:
Why self-invoked #Transactional method has no transactional semantics even though Spring is capable of intercepting self-invoked methods?
How #Configuration and AOP are related?
Why self-invoked #Transactional method has no transactional semantics?
Short answer:
This is how AOP made.
Long answer:
Declarative transaction management relies on AOP (for the majority of Spring applications on Spring AOP)
The Spring Framework’s declarative transaction management is made possible with Spring aspect-oriented programming (AOP)
It is proxy-based (§5.8.1. Understanding AOP Proxies)
Spring AOP is proxy-based.
From the same paragraph SimplePojo.java:
public class SimplePojo implements Pojo {
public void foo() {
// this next method invocation is a direct call on the 'this' reference
this.bar();
}
public void bar() {
// some logic...
}
}
And a snippet proxying it:
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
ProxyFactory factory = new ProxyFactory(new SimplePojo());
factory.addInterface(Pojo.class);
factory.addAdvice(new RetryAdvice());
Pojo pojo = (Pojo) factory.getProxy();
// this is a method call on the proxy!
pojo.foo();
}
}
The key thing to understand here is that the client code inside the main(..) method of the Main class has a reference to the proxy.
This means that method calls on that object reference are calls on the proxy.
As a result, the proxy can delegate to all of the interceptors (advice) that are relevant to that particular method call.
However, once the call has finally reached the target object (the SimplePojo, reference in this case), any method calls that it may make on itself, such as this.bar() or this.foo(), are going to be invoked against the this reference, and not the proxy.
This has important implications. It means that self-invocation is not going to result in the advice associated with a method invocation getting a chance to execute.
(Key parts are emphasized.)
You may think that aop works as follows:
Imagine we have a Foo class which we want to proxy:
Foo.java:
public class Foo {
public int getInt() {
return 42;
}
}
There is nothing special. Just getInt method returning 42
An interceptor:
Interceptor.java:
public interface Interceptor {
Object invoke(InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo);
}
LogInterceptor.java (for demonstration):
public class LogInterceptor implements Interceptor {
#Override
public Object invoke(InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo) {
System.out.println("log. before");
try {
return interceptingFoo.getInt();
} finally {
System.out.println("log. after");
}
}
}
InvokeTargetInterceptor.java:
public class InvokeTargetInterceptor implements Interceptor {
#Override
public Object invoke(InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo) {
try {
System.out.println("Invoking target");
Object targetRetVal = interceptingFoo.method.invoke(interceptingFoo.target);
System.out.println("Target returned " + targetRetVal);
return targetRetVal;
} catch (Throwable t) {
throw new RuntimeException(t);
} finally {
System.out.println("Invoked target");
}
}
}
Finally InterceptingFoo.java:
public class InterceptingFoo extends Foo {
public Foo target;
public List<Interceptor> interceptors = new ArrayList<>();
public int index = 0;
public Method method;
#Override
public int getInt() {
try {
Interceptor interceptor = interceptors.get(index++);
return (Integer) interceptor.invoke(this);
} finally {
index--;
}
}
}
Wiring everything together:
public static void main(String[] args) throws Throwable {
Foo target = new Foo();
InterceptingFoo interceptingFoo = new InterceptingFoo();
interceptingFoo.method = Foo.class.getDeclaredMethod("getInt");
interceptingFoo.target = target;
interceptingFoo.interceptors.add(new LogInterceptor());
interceptingFoo.interceptors.add(new InvokeTargetInterceptor());
interceptingFoo.getInt();
interceptingFoo.getInt();
}
Will print:
log. before
Invoking target
Target returned 42
Invoked target
log. after
log. before
Invoking target
Target returned 42
Invoked target
log. after
Now let's take a look at ReflectiveMethodInvocation.
Here is a part of its proceed method:
Object interceptorOrInterceptionAdvice = this.interceptorsAndDynamicMethodMatchers.get(++this.currentInterceptorIndex);
++this.currentInterceptorIndex should look familiar now
Here is the target
And there are interceptors
the method
the index
You may try introducing several aspects into your application and see the stack growing at the proceed method when advised method is invoked
Finally everything ends up at MethodProxy.
From its invoke method javadoc:
Invoke the original method, on a different object of the same type.
And as I mentioned previously documentation:
once the call has finally reached the target object any method calls that it may make on itself are going to be invoked against the this reference, and not the proxy
I hope now, more or less, it's clear why.
How #Configuration and AOP are related?
The answer is they are not related.
So Spring here is free to do whatever it wants. Here it is not tied to the proxy AOP semantics.
It enhances such classes using ConfigurationClassEnhancer.
Take a look at:
CALLBACKS
BeanMethodInterceptor
BeanFactoryAwareMethodInterceptor
Returning to the question
If Spring can successfully intercept intra class function calls in a #Configuration class, why does it not support it in a regular bean?
I hope from technical point of view it is clear why.
Now my thoughts from non-technical side:
I think it is not done because Spring AOP is here long enough...
Since Spring Framework 5 the Spring WebFlux framework has been introduced.
Currently Spring Team is working hard towards enhancing reactive programming model
See some notable recent blog posts:
Reactive Transactions with Spring
Spring Data R2DBC 1.0 M2 and Spring Boot starter released
Going Reactive with Spring, Coroutines and Kotlin Flow
More and more features towards less-proxying approach of building Spring applications are introduced. (see this commit for example)
So I think that even though it might be possible to do what you've described it is far from Spring Team's #1 priority for now

Because AOP proxies and #Configuration class serve a different purpose, and are implemented in a significantly different ways (even though both involve using proxies).
Basically, AOP uses composition while #Configuration uses inheritance.
AOP proxies
The way these work is basically that they create proxies that do the relevant advice logic before/after delegating the call to the original (proxied) object. The container registers this proxy instead of the proxied object itself, so all dependencies are set to this proxy and all calls from one bean to another go through this proxy. However, the proxied object itself has no pointer to the proxy (it doesn't know it's proxied, only the proxy has a pointer to the target object). So any calls within that object to other methods don't go through the proxy.
(I'm only adding this here for contrast with #Configuration, since you seem to have correct understanding of this part.)
#Configuration
Now while the objects that you usually apply the AOP proxy to are a standard part of your application, the #Configuration class is different - for one, you probably never intend to create any instances of that class directly yourself. This class truly is just a way to write configuration of the bean container, has no meaning outside Spring and you know that it will be used by Spring in a special way and that it has some special semantics outside of just plain Java code - e.g. that #Bean-annotated methods actually define Spring beans.
Because of this, Spring can do much more radical things to this class without worrying that it will break something in your code (remember, you know that you only provide this class for Spring, and you aren't going to ever create or use its instance directly).
What it actually does is it creates a proxy that's subclass of the #Configuration class. This way, it can intercept invocation of every (non-final non-private) method of the #Configuration class, even within the same object (because the methods are effectively all overriden by the proxy, and Java has all the methods virtual). The proxy does exactly this to redirect any method calls that it recognizes to be (semantically) references to Spring beans to the actual bean instances instead of invoking the superclass method.

read a bit spring source code. I try to answer it.
the point is how spring deal with the #Configurationand #bean.
in the ConfigurationClassPostProcessor which is a BeanFactoryPostProcessor, it will enhance all ConfigurationClasses and creat a Enhancer as a subClass.
this Enhancer register two CALLBACKS(BeanMethodInterceptor,BeanFactoryAwareMethodInterceptor).
you call PersistenceJPAConfig method will go through the CALLBACKS. in BeanMethodInterceptor,it will get bean from spring container.
it may be not clearly. you can see the source code in ConfigurationClassEnhancer.java BeanMethodInterceptor.ConfigurationClassPostProcessor.java enhanceConfigurationClasses

You can't call #Transactional method in same class
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.
Also #Transactional should be on Service layer and not on #Repository
transactions belong on the Service layer. It's the one that knows about units of work and use cases. It's the right answer if you have several DAOs injected into a Service that need to work together in a single transaction.
So you need to rethink your transaction approach, so your methods can be reuse in a flow including several other DAO operations that are roll-able

Spring uses proxying for method invocation and when you use this... it bypasses that proxy. For #Bean annotations Spring uses reflection to find them.

Commit transaction immideatly after method finished

I have the following problem:
I'm using Spring MVC 4.0.5 with Hibernate 4.3.5 and I'm trying to create a Restfull Web application. The problem is that I want to exclude some fields from getting serialized as JSON, depending on the method called in the controller using aspects.
My problem now is that Hiberate does not commit the transaction immideatly after it returns from a method but just before serializing.
Controller.java
public class LoginController {
/*
* Autowire all the Services and stuff..
*/
#RemoveAttribues({"fieldA","fieldB"})
#RequestMapping{....}
public ResponseEntity login(#RequestBody user) {
User updatedUser = userService.loginTheUser(user);
return new ResponseEntity<>(updatedUser,HttpStatus.OK);
}
}
Service.java
public class UserService {
#Transactional
public User loginUser(User user) {
user.setLoginToken("some generated token");
return userDao.update(user); //userDao just calls entityManager.merge(..)
}
}
The advice of the aspect does the following:
for every String find the corresponding setter and set the field to null
This is done, like I said, to avoid serialization of data (for which Jackson 2 is used)
The problem now is that only after the advice has finished the transaction is commited. Is there anything I can do to tell hibernate to commit immediatly or do I have to dig deeper and start handling the transactions myself (which I would like to avoid)?
EDIT:
I also have autocommit turned on
<prop key="hibernate.connection.autocommit">true</prop>
I think the problem lies in the fact that I use lazy loading (because each user may have a huge laod of other enities attached to him), so the transaction is not commited until I try to serialze the object.

Don't set auto-commit to true. It's a terrible mistake.
I think you need a UserService interface and a UserServiceImpl for the interface implementation. Whatever you now have in the UserService class must be migrated to UserServiceImpl instead.
This can ensure that the #Transactions are applied even for JDK dynamic proxies and not just for CGLIB runtime proxies.
If you are using Open-Session-in-View anti-patterns, you need to let it go and use session-per-request instead. It's much more scalable and it forces you to handle optimum queries sin your data layer.
Using JDBC Transaction Management and the default session-close-on-request pattern you should be fine with this issue.

How to use session variables in DAO layer?

I have a #SessionScoped ApplicationBean for storing user login info and injecting it into other managed beans successfully as told here.
I also use my Dao interfaces by #ManagedProperty annotation but I feel something wrong with my usage.
Assume that there is as StockDao that has a public method listStocks(String companyCode) and companyCode is stored in the ApplicationBean when user logins.
So my managed bean is calling the DAO layer like this
#ManagedProperty(value = "#{appBean}")
ApplicationBean appBean;
public void getStockList() {
return stockDao.listStocks(appBean.getCompanyCode());
}
This repeats everywhere where the sql needs companyCode.
I feel that it would be better if my DAO layer had known companyCode (which means injecting ApplicationBean into DAOs) and I should use my methods like below
public void getStockList() {
return stockDao.listStocks();
}
So the question is, which API design would be better and if you vote for the second, how can I inject #SessionScoped beans into DAO layer?

For me 1st approach is much cleaner ,
i dont want to tie DAO layer with the session managed bean.
I keep my general artifacts especially daos and data models packaged as a seperate Jar , without any external dependencies
This way i could use the same without any modifications be it a Web App , Stand Alone or in an EJB
This keeps your Dao independent of how/where the Company Code is fetched from

You do not use session variables in the DAO layer. Lack of business logic and user interface matters is exactly what makes it DAO: a layer responsible just for abstracting data access.
If you add session-dependent state, you will turn your DAO layer into DAAMUIS layer (the ubiquitous Data Access And Miscellaneous User Interface Stuff layer). I am not saying that DAAMUIS is wrong or evil, just that the question needs rephrasing.

#Transactional methods in #Controller class are not considred as transactional

I noticed that the following is not working in a class marked as a #Controller:
#Autowired
SessionFactory sessionFactory;
#ResponseBody
#Transactional
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET , value = "/map")
public ArrayList<PhotoDTO> getPhotos(...someParams) {
Entity result sessionFactory.getCurrentSession()... //do some manipulation
return result;
}
when I call the URL, I get an error saying that the method is not transactional (although, as you can see, it is marked as one)
If I copy this method to a another class called MyService and call it from the controller instead, it works perfectly
Is this some sort of a Spring advice (a conspiracy to make me use more classes more or less)?

Don't do transactions in your controller. Put them in your service layer classes.
Separate your code into model-view-controller.
Yes it is a conspiracy. It enables to you to share code between controllers/views without repeating code. And also stops rollbacks of transactions unnecessarily (for exceptions unrelated to the actual transaction).
It might seem like more code to begin with, but in the long run it is much more manageable and simpler to develop.

Probably you have two application contexts here: main Spring context loaded by ContextLoaderListener and a child context loaded by DispatcherServlet. You need to put <tx:annotation-driven /> in the configuration loaded by the child context too. If you show us your web.xml file maybe I can help you more.
Anyway, as #NimChimpsky says, is usually not a good practice to manage transactions in your controller layer.

designing a hibernate dao

I am using following code
TestDAO {
Session session = null;
public TestDAO() {
this.session = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession();
}
//...more code create,update ...
//each method starts a transcation using "tx= session.beginTransaction();"
}
1)Now should i commit the transcation using tx.commit for a fetch operation too or only for save/update operation??
2)Should i create a seperate instance of TestDAO every time i need?Or should i create a singleton class that returns a single instance of DAO everytme?Will this have a problem?

You don't need tx.commit() for fetch operation. That is only needed for any save, update or delete. Close the session after data fetching.
If your application connect to only one database then use of single DAO is better. Spring framework encourages this. You will find more details about this on the following link
Don't repeat the DAO!

Transactions should not be the responsibility of the DAO, those really need to be controlled at a higher level. A DAO should be something that does queries and updates without being aware of the bigger picture, calls to DAOs can be grouped within an object like a Spring service or EJB session bean which is responsible for deciding what needs to go together in a transaction. This makes your DAO code more reusable since it doesn't have to know as much about the context in which it's operating.
Look at how Spring does it (in the sample applications like petstore that come with Spring), or better, look at the King/Bauer Hibernate-JPA book, which has a chapter on creating DAOs.