Do I need to call firebase.database.on() again after token refresh?

Question

I'm having this problem with my application where it will eventually (unsure of the timeframe, presumably 1 hour) stop updating live with firebase realtime database changes without logging out and back in. The security rules prevent unauthorized users from accessing data. The user will remain logged in and the authentication session persists, so I've been miserably confused as to why it eventually stops updating.

After a painful amount of internet scouring, I've come to find out that the token ID given on login lasts only 1 hour, at which point they are refreshed automatically using the refresh token. (For the record I am logging in with firebase.auth().signInWithEmailAndPassword).

Now, my question - Do I need to resubscribe to my database after the token ID is refreshed? More specifically, do I need to call firebase.database().ref().off() and then subsequently call firebase.database().ref().on() when a token refresh is detected? If not, can you possibly point me in the direction of what might be going wrong?

Edit: It may also be worth noting that if I change my security rules to allow unauthenticated reads, the user is still able to write to the database indefinitely without having to reauthenticate.

Frank van Puffelen · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-12 22:43:34Z

1

Firebase passes the new authentication token to the database automatically. As long as the user remains the same, you don't need to reattach the listeners.

The only moment you might have to reattach is if the user somehow becomes signed out. This may happen when the ID token can't be refreshed, for example because the account has been disabled, or the password has been changed. In that case the existing listeners will be canceled, which will be logged in the client, and the (optional) error callback for on will be invoked. At that point you'll need to reauthenticate and attach new listeners.

answered Sep 12, 2020 at 22:43

Frank van Puffelen

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2 Comments

Digglit Over a year ago

Hey Frank I appreciate your response here. Is there anything I may be missing as to why my client will suddenly stop reading from my database seemingly at random?

Frank van Puffelen Over a year ago

That's hard to say without seeing a minimal reproduction of the problem. Hence my answer to the concrete question of whether you need to reattach listeners every hour: no you don't.

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