Problem with MVC testing and transaction manager

[dkane]

Dear colleagues,

I am writing unit tests for Spring MVC application that originally works under Resin. Hibernate is configured to use JTA transaction manager (via transaction.manager_lookup_class property). Datasource is deployed to Resin as well and accessed via JNDI. I have successfully got the datasource available using SimpleNamingContextBuilder . But hibernate still requires "java:comp/TransactionManager" bound to instance of javax.transaction.TransactionManager.
So I need either to bind some mock transaction manager to this name, or to intercept hibernate session factory work by saying not to look up it. What is the common approach for this ?
Many thanks for your qualified help, as always !

[Marten Deinum]

Don't use JTA in your tests, use a local transactionmanager (HibernateTransactionManager). If you really want to use JTA use an Embedded Jetty instance to test your application.

Also if you are writing tests which need your environment it probably is an integration test NOT a unit test. A unit test is testing a unit of work in Isolation. So no environment, not even Spring. Just your service and some stubs/mocks.

[dkane]

Don't use JTA in your tests, use a local transactionmanager (HibernateTransactionManager). If you really want to use JTA use an Embedded Jetty instance to test your application.

I'd be happy to use HibernateTransactionManager, but hibernate configuration in this project is tied to Resin transaction manager :

<property name="transaction.manager_lookup_class">
org.hibernate.transaction.ResinTransactionManagerLookup
</property>

Hibernate SessionFactoryImpl expects JTA TransactionManager in such case. I tried to create instance of HibernateTransactionManager and pass it under the same JNDI name ("java:comp/TransactionManager") , but it leads to ClassCastException .
Or is it possible to substitute hibernate configuration file solely for test run ?

[Marten Deinum]

Create a properties object named hibernateProperties, and include the default in the normal applicationContext. In your test configuration load an extra xml file overriding those properties.

<bean id="hibernateProperties" class="PropertiesFactoryBean">
  <property name="properties">
    <value>
      transaction.manager_lookup_class=org.hibernate.transaction.ResinTransactionManagerLookup

    <value>
  </property>
</bean>

In some applicationContext-test.xml

<bean id="hibernateProperties" class="PropertiesFactoryBean">
  <property name="properties">
    <value>
      //some hibernate properties
    <value>
  </property>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionManager" class="HibernateTransactionManager">
  .. other properties
</bean>

In your test case make sure the applicationContext-test.xml is loaded AFTER your other xml file. And you should be good to go.

[dkane]

This part of Spring configuration files are 3rd party packed in jar , so I can not change them. Hibernate properties are not Spring bean in there. Thank you for the idea anyway.