onSnapshot appears to stop working after a period of time

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I am using firestore onSnapshot methods in a React Native app on several different sets of data in my app, and for the most part they all appear to work fine. However, after a period of time, perhaps after the app is put into background and re-awakened, the onSnapshot methods stop updating the data.

It is as if they have switched off. Sometimes they seem to stop working just after a period of time, without the app being backgrounded.

If I call the methods again then they start working again, but that seems to defeat the object of using them, I may as well just use normal get() methods and call them when I need.

Surely someone else has experienced this and can help?

manpreet 2 years ago

When an error occurs, Firebase will invoke the (optional) second callback that you can pass in to functions like onSnapshot, or a simple get. E.g.

const coleccionRef = database.ref('test');
coleccionRef.on('value', snapshot => {
    snapshot.val();
}, error => {
    console.error(error);
});

You can inspect that error to understand what is going wrong.