我应该缓存 firebase refs 吗？

Question

I'm developing a web app backed with firebase realtime database.

The app's frontend is quite complex and there are several methods that write data to the db. I have several utils that look like this:

var utils = {
    setSomething: function(id, item) {
        var myRef = firebase.database().ref('my/path');
        myRef.set(item).then(something);
    }
}

The question here is: is it okay to create a new Ref inside the method (and thereby, creating a new ref with each call) or should I "cache" the ref somewhere else (just like we cache jquery objects).

I could do something like this first:

var cachedRefs = {
    myRef: firebase.database().ref('my/path'),
    yourRef: firebase.database().ref('your/path'),
    herRef: firebase.database().ref('her/path')
}

And then the former method could be rewritten as:

var utils = {
    setSomething: function(id, item) {
        cachedRefs.myRef.set(item).then(something);
    }
}

Is there any performance gain besides having less code repetition?

Answer 1

firebaser here

References just contain the location in the database. they are cheap.

Adding the first listener to a reference requires that we start synchronizing the data, so that is as expensive as the data you listen to. Adding extra listeners is then relatively cheap, since we de-duplicate the data synchronization across listeners.