Standard Configuration

To enable Spring transaction processing, simply create a DataSourceTransactionManager in your Spring XML configuration file:

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
  <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
</bean>

The DataSource specified can be any JDBC DataSource you would normally use with Spring. This includes connection pools as well as DataSources obtained through JNDI lookups.

Note that the DataSource specified for the transaction manager must be the same one that is used to create the SqlSessionFactoryBean or transaction management will not work.

Container Managed Transactions

If you are using a JEE container and would like Spring to participate in container managed transactions (CMT), then Spring should be configured with a JtaTransactionManager or one of its container specific subclasses. The easiest way to do this is to use the Spring transaction namespace:

<tx:jta-transaction-manager />

In this configuration, MyBatis will behave like any other Spring transactional resource configured with CMT. Spring will automatically use any existing container transaction and attach an SqlSession to it. If no transaction is started and one is needed based on the transaction configuration, Spring will start a new container managed transaction.

Note that if you want to use CMT and do not want to use Spring transaction management, you must not configure any Spring transaction manager and you must also configure the SqlSessionFactoryBean to use the base MyBatis ManagedTransactionFactory:

<bean id="sqlSessionFactory" class="org.mybatis.spring.SqlSessionFactoryBean">
  <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
  <property name="transactionFactory">
    <bean class="org.apache.ibatis.transaction.managed.ManagedTransactionFactory" />
  </property>  
</bean>

Programmatic Transaction Management

MyBatis SqlSession provides you with specific methods to handle transactions programmatically. But when using MyBatis-Spring your beans will be injected with a Spring managed SqlSession or a Spring managed mapper. That means that Spring will always handle your transactions.

You cannot call SqlSession.commit(), SqlSession.rollback() or SqlSession.close() over a Spring managed SqlSession. If you try to do so, a UnsupportedOperationException exception will be thrown. Note these methods are not exposed in injected mapper classes.

Regardless of your JDBC connection's autocommit setting, any execution of a SqlSession data method or any call to a mapper method outside a Spring transaction will be automatically committed.

If you want to control your transactions programmatically please refer to chapter 10.6 of the Spring reference manual. This code shows how to handle a transaction manually using the PlatformTransactionManager described in section 10.6.2.

DefaultTransactionDefinition def = new DefaultTransactionDefinition();
def.setPropagationBehavior(TransactionDefinition.PROPAGATION_REQUIRED);

TransactionStatus status = txManager.getTransaction(def);
try {
  userMapper.insertUser(user);
}
catch (MyException ex) {
  txManager.rollback(status);
  throw ex;
}
txManager.commit(status);

Notice that this code uses a mapper, but it will also work with a SqlSession.