Symfony2: transactions fail with "There is no active transaction." - symfony

Question

I've spend several hours trying to resolve this issue. Google and Stackoverflow didn't help much either. So any advice is most welcome here.
I'm trying to apply a rollback logic with transactions when updating two tables in relation:
The code in general is:
// ...
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getEntityManager();
$em->getConnection()->beginTransaction();
foreach($dataArr as $data) {
$userObj = $em->getRepository('AcmeBundle:User')->find($userId);
$userObj->setActive(1);
$em->persist($userObj);
$em->getConnection()->commit();
}
$storeObj = $em->getRepository('AcmeBundle:Store')->find($storeId);
$storeObj->setIsOpen(1);
$em->persist($storeObj);
$em->getConnection()->commit();
try {
$em->flush();
$em->clear();
} catch(Exception $e) {
$em->getConnection()->rollback();
$em->close();
throw $e;
}
My PDO drivers are enabled, updating without transactions works as expected, but once I beginTransaction() and try to commit() nothing works and I get the There is no active transaction. exception.
Some sources suggested using only commit() without persist() but it doesn't make any difference. I'm probably doing something really stupid here, but I just cannot see what it is.

Answer 1

After
$this->em->getConnection()->beginTransaction();
you must write:
$this->em->getConnection()->setAutoCommit(false);
It works for me :)

Answer 2

I once accidentally got this error
by doing following:
$em->getConnection()->beginTransaction();
try {
$em->persist($entityA);
$em->flush();
$em->persist($entityB);
$em->flush();
$em->getConnection()->commit();
//exception thrown here
$mailer->send($from, $to, $subject, $text);
} catch (\Exception($ex)) {
$em->getConnection()->rollback();
}
So, you already have guessed that there should not be any code after commit as in the case when this arbitary code($mailer service in our example) throws an exception transaction would be closed before the moment catch block is executed. Maybe this will save a minute or two to somebody:)

Answer 3

Since the version 1.5.2 of DoctrineBundle, you can configure the connection to use auto_commit in the configuration of your project.
# app/config/config.yml (sf2-3) or config/doctrine.yaml (sf4)
doctrine:
dbal:
auto_commit: false

Answer 4

As #prodigitalson correctly suggested I needed to do a commit() before the flush() in order for the get the queries executed. So the working code now is:
$em = $this->getDoctrine()->getEntityManager();
$em->getConnection()->beginTransaction();
foreach($dataArr as $data) {
$userObj = $em->getRepository('AcmeBundle:User')->find($userId);
$userObj->setActive(1);
$em->persist($userObj);
// this is no longer needed
// $em->getConnection()->commit();
}
$storeObj = $em->getRepository('AcmeBundle:Store')->find($storeId);
$storeObj->setIsOpen(1);
$em->persist($storeObj);
// this is no longer needed
// $em->getConnection()->commit();
try {
// Do a commit before the FLUSH
$em->getConnection()->commit();
$em->flush();
$em->clear();
} catch(Exception $e) {
$em->getConnection()->rollback();
$em->close();
throw $e;
}