Does Spring @Transactional attribute work on a private method?

Question

If I have a @Transactional -annotation on a private method in a Spring bean, does the annotation have any effect?

If the @Transactional annotation is on

Answer 1

By default the @Transactional attribute works only when calling an annotated method on a reference obtained from applicationContext.

public class Bean {
  public void doStuff() {
    doTransactionStuff();
  }
  @Transactional
  public void doTransactionStuff() {

  }
}

This will open a transaction:

Bean bean = (Bean)appContext.getBean("bean");
bean.doTransactionStuff();

This will not:

Bean bean = (Bean)appContext.getBean("bean");
bean.doStuff();

Spring Reference: Using @Transactional

Note: In proxy mode (which is the default), only 'external' method calls coming in through the proxy will be intercepted. This means that 'self-invocation', i.e. a method within the target object calling some other method of the target object, won't lead to an actual transaction at runtime even if the invoked method is marked with @Transactional!

Consider the use of AspectJ mode (see below) if you expect self-invocations to be wrapped with transactions as well. In this case, there won't be a proxy in the first place; instead, the target class will be 'weaved' (i.e. its byte code will be modified) in order to turn @Transactional into runtime behavior on any kind of method.