Transactions not persisting - Spring MVC with Hibernate - mysql

Question

I have a spring MVC (4.1.6) app, using Hibernate ORM (5.3.7) on top of a MySQL 8 Database.
I have a view with a form that should create a row in the DB when it is submitted, but it does not. I can tell the information gets to my #Service bean and DAO #Repository bean. I can also successfully query data from the DB and display it on a view, if I update the DB directly through SQL.
I have read a number of posts and tried to reconfigure my application context and servlet context XMLs with no luck. Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong?
Below are some snippets.
Web_XML
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>
/WEB-INF/spring/applicationContext-dao.xml
/WEB-INF/spring/applicationContext-security.xml
</param-value>
</context-param>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/spring/applicationContext-web.xml</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
applicationContext-web.xml
<context:component-scan base-package="edu.neu.snowfinder">
<context:include-filter expression="org.springframework.stereotype.Controller" type="annotation"/>
</context:component-scan>
<interceptors>
<beans:bean class= "org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.support.OpenSessionInViewInterceptor">
<beans:property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
</beans:bean>
</interceptors>
applicationContext-dao.xml
<bean id="sessionFactory" class = "org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name = "dataSource" ref = "dataSource"/>
<property name = "configLocation">
<value> classpath:hibernate.cfg.xml</value>
</property>
</bean>
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager" />
<bean id = "transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref = "sessionFactory"/>
<property name="dataSource" ref = "dataSource"/>
</bean>
UserServiceImpl
#Service
public class UserServiceImpl implements UserService {
#Autowired
#Qualifier("userHibernateDAO")
private UserDAO userDAO;
#Override
#Transactional
public void createUser(User user) {
System.out.println("Does the Sevice have the user?"+user.getFirstname());
userDAO.createUser(user);
}
#Override
#Transactional
public Collection<User> listUsers() {
return userDAO.listUsers();
}
}
UserHibernateDAO
#Repository
public class UserHibernateDAO implements UserDAO {
#Autowired
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
#Override
public void createUser(User user) {
Session session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
session.beginTransaction();
System.out.println("Does the DAO have the user?"+user.getFirstname());
System.out.println("Does the DAO have a session?"+sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().toString());
Serializable id = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().save(user);
session.getTransaction().commit();
System.out.println("Whats the saved User's ID??"+id.toString());
}
hibernate.cfg.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE hibernate-configuration SYSTEM
"http://www.hibernate.org/dtd/hibernate-configuration-3.0.dtd">
<hibernate-configuration>
<session-factory>
<property name = "hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL8Dialect</property>
<property name = "hibernate.showsql">true</property>
<property name = "hibernate.formatsql">true</property>
<property name = "hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto">create</property>
<mapping class = "edu.neu.snowfinder.model.User"/>
</session-factory>
</hibernate-configuration>