How to bypass the Firebase cache to refresh data (in Android app)?

Question

On an Android application which must works offline most of the time I need, when it\'s online, to do some synchronous operations for i.e. :

User myUser =  My         


        

Answer 1

I tried both accepted solution and I tried transaction. Transaction solution is cleaner and nicer, but success OnComplete is called only when db is online, so you can't load from cache. But you can abort transaction, then onComplete will be called when offline (with cached data) aswell.

I previously created function which worked only if database got connection lomng enough to do synch. I fixed issue by adding timeout. I will work on this and test if this works. Maybe in the future, when I get free time, I will create android lib and publish it, but by then it is the code in kotlin:

/**
     * @param databaseReference reference to parent database node
     * @param callback callback with mutable list which returns list of objects and boolean if data is from cache
     * @param timeOutInMillis if not set it will wait all the time to get data online. If set - when timeout occurs it will send data from cache if exists
     */
    fun readChildrenOnlineElseLocal(databaseReference: DatabaseReference, callback: ((mutableList: MutableList<@kotlin.UnsafeVariance T>, isDataFromCache: Boolean) -> Unit), timeOutInMillis: Long? = null) {

        var countDownTimer: CountDownTimer? = null

        val transactionHandlerAbort = object : Transaction.Handler { //for cache load
            override fun onComplete(p0: DatabaseError?, p1: Boolean, data: DataSnapshot?) {
                val listOfObjects = ArrayList()
                data?.let {
                    data.children.forEach {
                        val child = it.getValue(aClass)
                        child?.let {
                            listOfObjects.add(child)
                        }
                    }
                }
                callback.invoke(listOfObjects, true)
                removeListener()
            }

            override fun doTransaction(p0: MutableData?): Transaction.Result {
                return Transaction.abort()
            }
        }

        val transactionHandlerSuccess = object : Transaction.Handler { //for online load
            override fun onComplete(p0: DatabaseError?, p1: Boolean, data: DataSnapshot?) {
                countDownTimer?.cancel()
                val listOfObjects = ArrayList()
                data?.let {
                    data.children.forEach {
                        val child = it.getValue(aClass)
                        child?.let {
                            listOfObjects.add(child)
                        }
                    }
                }
                callback.invoke(listOfObjects, false)
                removeListener()
            }

            override fun doTransaction(p0: MutableData?): Transaction.Result {
                return Transaction.success(p0)
            }
        }

If you want to make it faster for offline (to don't wait stupidly with timeout when obviously database is not connected) then check if database is connected before using function above:

DatabaseReference connectedRef = FirebaseDatabase.getInstance().getReference(".info/connected");
connectedRef.addValueEventListener(new ValueEventListener() {
  @Override
  public void onDataChange(DataSnapshot snapshot) {
    boolean connected = snapshot.getValue(Boolean.class);
    if (connected) {
      System.out.println("connected");
    } else {
      System.out.println("not connected");
    }
  }

  @Override
  public void onCancelled(DatabaseError error) {
    System.err.println("Listener was cancelled");
  }
});