Firebase Offline Capabilities and addListenerForSingleValueEvent

Question

Whenever I use addListenerForSingleValueEvent with setPersistenceEnabled(true), I only manage to get a local offline copy of DataSnapshot

Answer 1

So I have a working solution for this. All you have to do is use ValueEventListener and remove the listener after 0.5 seconds to make sure you've grabbed the updated data by then if needed. Realtime database has very good latency so this is safe. See safe code example below;

public class FirebaseController {

private DatabaseReference mRootRef;
private Handler mHandler = new Handler();

private FirebaseController() {
    FirebaseDatabase.getInstance().setPersistenceEnabled(true);

    mRootRef = FirebaseDatabase.getInstance().getReference();
}

public static FirebaseController getInstance() {
    if (sInstance == null) {
        sInstance = new FirebaseController();
    }
    return sInstance;
}

Then some method you'd have liked to use "addListenerForSingleEvent";

public void getTime(final OnTimeRetrievedListener listener) {
    DatabaseReference ref = mRootRef.child("serverTime");
    ref.addValueEventListener(new ValueEventListener() {
        @Override
        public void onDataChange(DataSnapshot dataSnapshot) {
            if (listener != null) {
                // This can be called twice if data changed on server - SO DEAL WITH IT!
                listener.onTimeRetrieved(dataSnapshot.getValue(Long.class));
            }
            // This can be called twice if data changed on server - SO DEAL WITH IT!
            removeListenerAfter2(ref, this);
        }

        @Override
        public void onCancelled(DatabaseError databaseError) {
            removeListenerAfter2(ref, this);
        }
    });
}

// ValueEventListener version workaround for addListenerForSingleEvent not working.
private void removeListenerAfter2(DatabaseReference ref, ValueEventListener listener) {
    mHandler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            HelperUtil.logE("removing listener", FirebaseController.class);
            ref.removeEventListener(listener);
        }
    }, 500);
}

// ChildEventListener version workaround for addListenerForSingleEvent not working.
private void removeListenerAfter2(DatabaseReference ref, ChildEventListener listener) {
    mHandler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            HelperUtil.logE("removing listener", FirebaseController.class);
            ref.removeEventListener(listener);
        }
    }, 500);
}

Even if they close the app before the handler is executed, it will be removed anyways. Edit: this can be abstracted to keep track of added and removed listeners in a HashMap using reference path as key and datasnapshot as value. You can even wrap a fetchData method that has a boolean flag for "once" if this is true it would do this workaround to get data once, else it would continue as normal. You're Welcome!