Subscribe to Queryable Fields - Kotlin SDK
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Flexible Sync uses subscriptions and permissions to determine which data to sync with your App.
Prerequisites
To use Flexible Sync in the SDK:
- Configure Flexible Sync on the backend
- Authenticate a user in your client app.
- Open the synced Realm with a Flexible Sync configuration
You can add, update, and remove query subscriptions to determine which data syncs to the client device.
Subscriptions
When you configure Flexible Sync on the backend, you specify which fields
your client application can query. In the client application, use the
subscriptions
API to manage a set of subscriptions to specific queries on
queryable fields. You can construct queries with
Realm Query Language.
Flexible Sync does not support all the operators available in Realm Query Language. See Flexible Sync RQL Limitations for details.
You can:
- Add subscriptions
- React to subscription state
- Update subscriptions with new queries
- Remove individual subscriptions or all subscriptions for an object type
Data matching the subscription, where the user has the appropriate permissions, syncs between clients and the backend application.
You can specify an optional string name for your subscription.
Always specify a subscription name if your application uses multiple subscriptions. This makes your subscriptions easier to look up, update, and delete elsewhere in your app.
When you create a subscription, Realm looks for data matching a query on a specific object type. You can create multiple subscription sets on different object types, and even query multiple times on the same object type.
Subscription names must be unique. Adding a subscription with the same name as an existing subscription throws an error.
Add a Subscription
Add a subscription in a subscriptions update block. You append each new subscription to the client's Realm subscriptions.
realm.subscriptions.update { this.add(realm.query<Toad>("name == $0", "another name value"), "another subscription name") }
You must add both an object and its linked object to the subscription set to see a linked object.
If your subscription results contain an object with a property that links to an object not contained in the results, the link appears to be nil. There is no way to distinguish whether that property's value is legitimately nil, or whether the object it links to exists but is out of view of the query subscription.
Wait for Subscription Changes to Sync
Writing an update to the subscription set locally is only one component of changing a subscription. After the local subscription change, the client synchronizes with the server to resolve any updates to the data due to the subscription change. This could mean adding or removing data from the synced realm. Use the SynConfiguration.waitForInitialRemoteData() builder method to force your application to block until client subscription data synchronizes to the backend before opening the realm:
// make an update to the list of subscriptions realm.subscriptions.update { this.add(realm.query<Toad>("name == $0", "another name value"), "another subscription name") } // wait for subscription to fully synchronize changes realm.subscriptions.waitForSynchronization(Duration.parse("10s"))
You can also use SubscriptionSet.waitForSynchronization() to delay execution until subscription sync completes after instantiating a sync connection.
SubscriptionSet.State`` Enum
Additionally, you can watch the state of the subscription set with the SubscriptionSetState enum. You can use subscription state to:
- Show a progress indicator while data is downloading
- Find out when a subscription set becomes superseded
You can access the state of your application's subscription set using
SubscriptionSet.state
.
Superceded
SUPERCEDED
is a SubscriptionSetState
that can occur when another
thread writes a subscription on a different instance of the
subscription set. If the state becomes SUPERCEDED
, you must obtain
a new instance of the subscription set before you can write to it.
Update Subscriptions with a New Query
You can update subscriptions using
SubscriptionSet.update().
In this example, we use MutableSubscriptionSet.add().
to update the query for the subscription named "my frog subscription".
You must set the updateExisting
parameter to true
to update
a subscription with add()
:
// create an initial subscription named "subscription name" val config = SyncConfiguration.Builder(user, setOf(Toad::class)) .initialSubscriptions { realm -> add( realm.query<Toad>( "name == $0", "name value" ), "subscription name" ) } .build() val realm = Realm.open(config) // to update that subscription, add another subscription with the same name // it will replace the existing subscription realm.subscriptions.update { this.add( realm.query<Toad>("name == $0", "another name value"), "subscription name", updateExisting = true ) }
You cannot update subscriptions created without a name. However, you can look up unnamed subscriptions by their query, remove them from the subscription set, then add a new subscription with an updated query:
val subscription = realm.subscriptions.findByQuery( realm.query<Toad>("name == $0", "name value")) if (subscription != null) { realm.subscriptions.update { this.remove(subscription) this.add( realm.query<Toad>( "name == $0", "another name value" ), "subscription name" ) } }
Remove Subscriptions
To remove subscriptions, you can:
- Remove a single subscription query
- Remove all subscriptions to a specific object type
- Remove all subscriptions
When you remove a subscription query, Realm asynchronously removes the synced data that matched the query from the client device.
Remove a Single Subscription
You can remove a specific subscription query
using MutableSubscriptionSet.remove().
You can either look up the subscription by name, then pass the returned
subscription to remove()
, or pass the subscription name directly to
remove()
:
// create an initial subscription named "subscription name" val config = SyncConfiguration.Builder(user, setOf(Toad::class)) .initialSubscriptions { realm -> add( realm.query<Toad>( "name == $0", "name value" ), "subscription name" ) } .build() val realm = Realm.open(config) // remove subscription by name realm.subscriptions.update { this.remove("subscription name") }
Remove All Subscriptions to an Object Type
If you want to remove all subscriptions to a specific object type, pass a class to the MutableSubscriptionSet.removeAll(). method:
// create an initial subscription named "subscription name" val config = SyncConfiguration.Builder(user, setOf(Toad::class)) .initialSubscriptions { realm -> add( realm.query<Toad>( "name == $0", "name value" ), "subscription name" ) } .build() val realm = Realm.open(config) // remove all subscriptions to type Toad realm.subscriptions.update { this.removeAll(Toad::class) }
Remove All Subscriptions
To remove all subscriptions from the subscription set, use MutableSubscriptionSet.removeAll(). with no arguments:
If you remove all subscriptions and do not add a new one, you'll get an error. A realm opened with a flexible sync configuration needs at least one subscription to sync with the server.
// create an initial subscription named "subscription name" val config = SyncConfiguration.Builder(user, setOf(Toad::class)) .initialSubscriptions { realm -> add( realm.query<Toad>( "name == $0", "name value" ), "subscription name" ) } .build() val realm = Realm.open(config) // remove all subscriptions realm.subscriptions.update { this.removeAll() }