Firestore still retrieving documents from cache even though I've disabled persistence

Question

My Firestore is still retrieving documents from cache even though I've explicitly told it not to:

class MainActivity : AppCompatActivity() {

    val db = FirebaseFirestore.getInstance()

    override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
        val dbSettings = FirebaseFirestoreSettings.Builder().setPersistenceEnabled(false).build()
        db.firestoreSettings = dbSettings

Above is my launcher activity where I set the Firestore settings.

In my fragment I perform a GeoFirestore GeoQuery:

class MapFragment : Fragment() {
    val instances = FirebaseFirestore.getInstance().collection("instances")
    val geoFirestore = GeoFirestore(instances)
    lateinit var nearbyDocs: GeoQuery

    private fun searchNearby(){
        nearbyDocs = geoFirestore.queryAtLocation(currentLocation, 1.0)
        nearbyDocs.addGeoQueryDataEventListener(object : GeoQueryDataEventListener {

            override fun onDocumentEntered(documentSnapshot: DocumentSnapshot, location: GeoPoint) {
               Log.d(TAG, "onDocumentEntered: user1: ${documentSnapshot.getString("user1")?.substring(0, 3)} | docId: ${documentSnapshot.id.substring(0, 5)} | fromCache: ${documentSnapshot.metadata.isFromCache}")
               Log.d(TAG, "isPersistanceEnabled2: ${db.firestoreSettings.isPersistenceEnabled}")
            }
    }

This is what it logs:

onDocumentEntered: user1: 0X6 | docId: lPLFf | fromCache: true
isPersistanceEnabled2: false

This doesn't make sense - I'm receiving cached documents even though my persistence is turned off.

Any idea what the problem is?

Edit: I have tried clearing the cache but that did not fix the problem.

Egor

Please edit the question to explain exactly how you are observing that documents are definitely coming from the cache and not the server. – Faircloth

Edited - when it happens again I will include the cached document log. – Egor

Probably, Doug didn't see your response since you haven't tagged him with @. He could have helped, I guess – Struma

@DougStevenson I've updated my answer with some examples of cache retrievals – Egor

Answer 1

You are now able to choose if you would like to fetch your data from the server only, or from the cache only, like this (an example for server only):

DocumentReference documentReference= FirebaseFirestore.getInstance().document("example");
documentReference.get(Source.SERVER).addOnSuccessListener(new OnSuccessListener<DocumentSnapshot>() {
    @Override
    public void onSuccess(DocumentSnapshot documentSnapshot) {
            //...
    }
});

For cache only, just change the code above to Source.CACHE.

By default, both methods still attempt server and fall back to the cache.

Kitten

Thanks this would solve my problem - but I'm using a library for my queries: github.com/imperiumlabs/GeoFirestore-Android so I don't have direct access to my code. – Egor

@Zorgan, since geofirestore doesn't have an option to force server reads, you can simply add this library as a module and change this specific part – Struma