Does Auth.currentUser still have a purpose?

[akauppi]

While debugging why I don't have access to Firestore data, I logged currentUser at some points.

It seems like it first matches the value I get in onAuthStateChanged listener, but then turns null - for no apparent reason.

I should share the whole damn code to really prove this, but it seems to me that something is wrong. It can be ES modules - not necessarily Firebase - that is to blame.

In my coding, I have learned to avoid currentUser and not build any application logic on it, since it's a synchronous global value. I listen to the change events, instead, and convert them to the front end framework's reactivity (Vue.js 3 or Svelte), early on. This gives me a nice, reactive value that tracks the user.

[sam-gc]

Using the state listeners is definitely the best pattern to follow, but currentUser should not become null unless you sign out. Out of curiosity, are you running this code on multiple tabs? Persistence events are the only things I can think of that would cause it to become null without the app doing anything.

[akauppi]

I have been able to get Firestore working, at least for observing a single document. Unfortunately, I have no idea what really flipped the switch...

To answer your questions, in order:

• I'm using getAuth(app); no initializeAuth()
• Yes, I think it does.

Your suspecting the memory persistence sounds like a real possibility. I'm building this with Vue.js 3 and Vue-router 4 and still don't really grasp how client side routing works (when there's a reload; when the components might be retained without a real reload).

That is part of why I'm building the app template: to make a realistic platform that "just works" so people who are web UI newbies can leave their struggles to the application specific parts. :)

[sam-gc]

Ah, makes sense, thanks for the explanation! Since you're using getAuth(), your auth instance is configured by default to use indexedDBLocalPersistence, so even if a full re-initialization were to occur it should still work.

Would you mind inspecting indexed db in the browser dev tools to see if there is one value? multiple values? And finally, when currentUser is logged as null, is the line deleted from indexed db in the dev tools? (Btw in my own testing I've noticed that you need to manually refresh the inspector in Chrome in order to see changes). For reference the key will look something like firebase:authUser:${YOUR_API_KEY}:${YOUR_APP_NAME}

[akauppi]

Thanks for the explanation as well!

I did get also collection/query following working! Let's see if I can help you with the currentUser debugging - here is the data you requested.

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But first, about @exp documentation:

• Would the auth persistence nuances please be documented. Currently, getAuth is giving good defaults to me, but it would be useful to know, which those are (IndexedDB, I reckon).

Initializes an Auth instance with platform specific default dependencies._source

I found the Authentication State Persistence page and will educate myself on the differences.

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My IndexedDB databases are:

firebase-installations-store has one entry
I cleared firebaseLocalStorage and new entries don't seem to surface there (did signout/sign-in)

Ah, you said about refreshing...

🙂Yep, now I have one:

firebase:authUser:AIzaSyDtBcQpkbfz73LgP013fvG98xNMnYB-MIo:[DEFAULT]

[akauppi]

Ok, solved the currentUser dilemma. It was nothing to do with Firebase so let's let this rest. Thanks for the help!

Was my mistake: not reading auth.currentUser (which does change); I had frozen it into a const instead. Dum!!! 🥴

[sam-gc]

Ah okay, glad you figured it out :) And thanks for the feedback regarding the platform-specific documentation!