To solve this, you can create a new node in your Firebase Realtime Database to hold all online users, so when the user opens the application, you'll immediately add his id to this newly created node. Then, if you want to check if the user is online, just check if his id exists in the list.
You can also add a new property named isOnline
for each user in your database and then update it accordingly.
For that, I recommend you using Firebase's built-in onDisconnect()
method. It enables you to predefine an operation that will happen as soon as the client becomes disconnected.
See Firebase documentation.
You can also detect the connection state of the user. For many presence-related features, it is useful for your app to know when it is online or offline. Firebase Realtime Database provides a special location at /.info/connected
which is updated every time the Firebase Realtime Database client's connection state changes. Here is an example also from the official documentation:
DatabaseReference connectedRef = FirebaseDatabase.getInstance().getReference(".info/connected");
connectedRef.addValueEventListener(new ValueEventListener() {
@Override
public void onDataChange(DataSnapshot snapshot) {
boolean connected = snapshot.getValue(Boolean.class);
if (connected) {
System.out.println("connected");
} else {
System.out.println("not connected");
}
}
@Override
public void onCancelled(DatabaseError error) {
System.err.println("Listener was cancelled");
}
});