Spring - @Transactional - What happens in background?

Question

I want to know what actually happens when you annotate a method with @Transactional? Of course, I know that Spring will wrap that method in a Transaction.

Answer 1

When Spring loads your bean definitions, and has been configured to look for @Transactional annotations, it will create these proxy objects around your actual bean. These proxy objects are instances of classes that are auto-generated at runtime. The default behaviour of these proxy objects when a method is invoked is just to invoke the same method on the "target" bean (i.e. your bean).

However, the proxies can also be supplied with interceptors, and when present these interceptors will be invoked by the proxy before it invokes your target bean's method. For target beans annotated with @Transactional, Spring will create a TransactionInterceptor, and pass it to the generated proxy object. So when you call the method from client code, you're calling the method on the proxy object, which first invokes the TransactionInterceptor (which begins a transaction), which in turn invokes the method on your target bean. When the invocation finishes, the TransactionInterceptor commits/rolls back the transaction. It's transparent to the client code.

As for the "external method" thing, if your bean invokes one of its own methods, then it will not be doing so via the proxy. Remember, Spring wraps your bean in the proxy, your bean has no knowledge of it. Only calls from "outside" your bean go through the proxy.

Does that help?