Exception 'Calls to setPersistenceEnabled must be made before any other usage of FIRDatabase instance.' was thrown while invoking enablePersistence on target FirestackDatabase with params

[vivekmago]

I cannot get persistence to work have the following code in my index file but it keeps cribbing about the error.. pls help what am I doing wrong...

const firestack = new Firestack();

firestack.onReady(()=> {
	firestack.database.setPersistence(true);
});

[inkloop]

Hello, @vivekmago ! Did you had some issues like this ?

[moooji]

I have the same problem in v3. Basically I am doing this:

const firestack = new Firestack();
firestack.database().setPersistence(true);

I guess the problem could be this code in the Database constructor:

this.offsetRef = this.ref('.info/serverTimeOffset');
this.offsetRef.on('value', (snapshot) => {
  this.serverTimeOffset = snapshot.val() || this.serverTimeOffset;
});

This accesses the database immediately, which means that it is not possible to execute setPersistence before. Do you think it is actually needed to have that method, or could it be just an option that can be passed to Firestack like const firestack = new Firestack({ persistence: true }): Does anybody see a use case that would require to switch persistence on/off/on during runtime?

[moooji]

Here is a PR that fixes the issue. #232

setPersistence has to be called before any database references have been created. Since the database constructor immediately creates refs to .info/serverTimeOffset, calling setPersistence will always throw and it is not possible to enable persistence currently. Furthermore, setPersistence is not part of the Web SDK API anyway.

To fix this issue, this PR makes setPersistence internal and adds instead an option persistence that can be supplied to the Firestack constructor. This guarantees that persistence will be enabled before any refs are created.

const firestack = new Firestack({ persistence: true });

[moooji]

@Salakar how do you enable persistence in your code? Can you post a snippet? I have seen this issue with all v3 branches including yours :-/

I am using Using FirebaseDatabase (3.1.1) on iOS, are you using the same?

Also the official SDK docs say about persistenceEnabled on iOS:

Note that this property must be set before creating your first Database reference and only needs to be called once per application.

https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/ios/firebasedatabase/api/reference/Classes/FIRDatabase#persistenceenabled

That being said, I cannot see how setPersistence could possibly work in v3 if the database constructor immediately creates references. Or do you see a way to call setPersistence before initializing the database?

Additionally, my thought is that an options is more suitable in this case than a method, because of the "[...] only needs to be called once per application."

@auser Are you using the persistence feature? Does it work for you in v3?

[Ehesp]

We just do the following, and import it throughout the app. No issues as far as I'm aware!

import Firestack from 'react-native-firestack';

const firestack = Firestack.initializeApp({
  debug: __DEV__ ? '*' : false,
  errorOnMissingPlayServices: false,
});

/**
 * Enable offline database persistence
 */
firestack.database().setPersistence(true);

export default firestack;

[Salakar]

@moooji can you confirm if @Ehesp 's solution works? We're on android only at the moment, but @chrisbianca is on ios and isn't facing this issue also I believe.

Think its a case of we need more docs 👀

[chrisbianca]

I'm not using .setPersistence() at the moment, so can't confirm either way on iOS.

Based on the docs @moooji is right, you need to call setPersistence before you create anything - perhaps this differs between iOS and Android? Regardless, it would make sense to follow the option approach to work around this as I can't see a reason where you'd want to enable and disable this feature throughout the app.

[esdrasportillo]

@Salakar I am facing this issue on iOS. I will try @Ehesp 's solution.

[esdrasportillo]

It doesn't work for me, even using @Ehesp 's solution. I am on v3 branch and on iOS.

[Ehesp]

Must be iOS specific. I think on Android it wasn't calling it before everything else so there was a fix.

[auser]

I like the idea that we can set this in the configuration, rather than it's own method.

[SamMatthewsIsACommonName]

Given this error on ios what method are you guys using to persist the user state at login? redux persist? Also when this works will it persist the auth state automatically or just the database state? Cheers

[moooji]

@SamMatthewsIsACommonName Database persistence works now on iOS using the latest v3 version and enabling the persistence option like this const firestack = new Firestack({ persistence: true });. This will persist the database state only. In regards to the user / auth persistence, the docs say

When a user signs up or signs in, that user becomes the current user of the Auth instance. The Firebase Auth instance persists the user's state, so that refreshing the page (in a browser) or restarting the application doesn't lose the user's information.

When the user signs out, the Auth instance stops keeping a reference to the User object and no longer persists its state; there is no current user. However, the user instance continues to be completely functional: if you keep a reference to it, you can still access and update the user's data.

So this does not have to do with database persistence and should be handled by the Auth module I think.

UPDATE:
I just tried out if auth persistence works in my app and it looks like it does in iOS at least (could not test Android). I signed in with email/password and fetched the token like this:

firestack.auth().getToken()
      .then(token => console.log(token));

Then, I closed the app and reopened it again. Without signing in, I could still fetch the same auth token again, so it looks like it is persisted.

In case there are more questions in regards to user persistence, we should maybe open a dedicated issue about that.

I think we can close this issue.