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@Transactional test does not execute all JPA lifecycle callback methods #28228
Description
Spring Boot v2.6.4
@Transactional tests are useful to roll back any test data created during tests; however, when a Spring integration test is annotated with @Transactional the following JPA lifecycle callback methods are not executed:
@PostPersist@PostLoad@PreUpdate@PostUpdate
Example project with tests demonstrating the issue here:
https://github.com/hughwphamill/transaction-test-entity-issue
I understand this is the desired behavior from a JPA perspective, but it's still undesirable from a test perspective.
@Transactional is incredibly useful in Spring integration tests to roll back test data, while exercising your whole application end to end. If your business logic uses JPA entity listeners then your application can't be properly tested in a @Transactional test.
Activity
[-]@Transactional @SpringBootTest does not execute several entity listener methods[/-][+]@Transactional test does not execute several entity listener methods[/+][-]@Transactional test does not execute several entity listener methods[/-][+]@Transactional test does not execute all JPA EntityListener methods[/+][-]@Transactional test does not execute all JPA EntityListener methods[/-][+]@Transactional test does not execute all JPA lifecycle callback methods[/+]sbrannen commentedon Mar 25, 2022
Hi @hughwphamill,
Thanks for opening your first issue for the Spring Framework. 👍🏻
You can still test the behavior of your JPA lifecycle callback methods with
@Transactionaltest methods, but you need to take into account the semantics of the unit of work (first level cache) in your ORM tool (i.e., the "persistence context" in JPA terminology).This usually means that you need to flush the state of the unit of work to the underlying database.
In the Avoid false positives when testing ORM code note in the Testing chapter of the reference manual, we point out that invoking
entityManager.flush()will help you to achieve this with JPA.For your particular test class, you can make the
@PostPersist,@PreUpdate, and@PostUpdatetests pass by invokingentityManager.flush()after each invocation ofrepository.save(entity). To make the@PostLoadtest pass, you additionally need to invokeentityManager.clear()after callingentityManager.flush().In summary, the behavior you have encountered is to be expected since all interactions with the unit of work occur within the same transaction.
To ensure that your JPA lifecycle callback methods are invoked, you have two choices.
@Transactionaltest.@Transactionaltests.I will add a note to the reference manual to point out the need to
flushandclearwhen using JPA lifecycle callback methods, in case other developers encounter this issue.Introduce tests for spring-projectsgh-28228
Add "Testing ORM entity lifecycle callbacks" note to Testing chapter
Change link from 5.3.x to main
hughwphamill commentedon Mar 28, 2022
@sbrannen Thanks very much for the detailed explanation and for updating the docs!
sbrannen commentedon Mar 28, 2022
@hughwphamill, you're welcome!
And thanks for providing feedback.