What causes "There is no open transaction to rollback" in SeaQL/sea-orm?

Only call rollback() when a transaction is known to be open (begin() succeeded and not yet ended)

There is no open transaction to rollback

Error message

There is no open transaction to rollback

What it means

In the mock database, rollback() aborts the currently open transaction. It panics when no transaction is open (self.transaction is None), i.e. rollback() was called without a matching begin() or after the transaction already ended. This enforces balanced transaction bookkeeping in tests.

Source

Thrown at sea-orm-sync/src/database/mock.rs:210

                        self.transaction_log.push(transaction.into_transaction());
                    }
                }
            }
            None => panic!("There is no open transaction to commit"),
        }
    }

    #[instrument(level = "trace")]
    fn rollback(&mut self) {
        match self.transaction.as_mut() {
            Some(transaction) => {
                if transaction.rollback(self.db_backend) {
                    if let Some(transaction) = self.transaction.take() {
                        self.transaction_log.push(transaction.into_transaction());
                    }
                }
            }
            None => panic!("There is no open transaction to rollback"),
        }
    }

    fn drain_transaction_log(&mut self) -> Vec<Transaction> {
        std::mem::take(&mut self.transaction_log)
    }

    fn get_database_backend(&self) -> DbBackend {
        self.db_backend
    }

    fn ping(&self) -> Result<(), DbErr> {
        Ok(())
    }
}

impl MockRow {
    /// Get a value from the [MockRow]

View on GitHub (pinned to e29bcd1b41)

Solutions

Only call rollback() when a transaction is known to be open (begin() succeeded and not yet ended)
Use RAII-style or guard-based transaction handling so commit/rollback happen exactly once
In tests, mirror the transaction lifecycle your real code executes

Example fix

// before
conn.rollback(); // panics: nothing to roll back
// after
conn.begin();
conn.execute(stmt).unwrap_err();
conn.rollback(); // ok

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

// only roll back when a transaction was started and not yet ended:
conn.begin();
// ... statements ...
conn.rollback();

Try / catch

std::panic::catch_unwind(std::panic::AssertUnwindSafe(|| conn.rollback())).err()
    .map(|_| eprintln!("rollback called without an open transaction"));

Prevention

Track a boolean `in_txn` in wrappers before issuing rollback
Avoid unconditional rollback in generic error handlers; roll back only where begin() succeeded
Make commit and rollback mutually exclusive per transaction in code paths

When it happens

Trigger: Calling rollback() on the mock connection with no begin() issued; calling rollback() twice; commit() already closed the transaction before rollback() ran.

Common situations: Error-handling code that unconditionally rolls back even when no transaction started; double-rollback in nested error paths; tests that simulate failures after the transaction was committed.

Understand the failure class

Background: "Invalid state transition" errors: "status must be X, actually Y", "already rejected/charging/uninstalled", "cannot ... while running" — what they mean when a library rejects your call — this error's family across 31 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of SeaQL/sea-orm@e29bcd1b41 (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/ed73d3a1634e80e8. Report an issue: GitHub.