Dart: Minimising access to Firebase in Flutter app

Question

I have the following widget which builds a to-do list from a subcollection of a task given its document ID. The code is working fine.

  Widget buildFoodList() {
return SizedBox(
  child: Container(
      padding: const EdgeInsets.all(10.0),
      child: StreamBuilder<QuerySnapshot>(
        stream: Firestore.instance.collection('tasks').document(documentID).collection('todo')
            .snapshots(),
        builder: (BuildContext context,
            AsyncSnapshot<QuerySnapshot> snapshot) {
          if (snapshot.hasError)
            return new Text('Error: ${snapshot.error}');
          switch (snapshot.connectionState) {
            case ConnectionState.waiting:
              return new Text('Loading...');
            default:
              return new ListView.builder(
                shrinkWrap: true,
                itemCount: snapshot.data.documents.length,
                itemBuilder: (context, index) {
                  DocumentSnapshot ds = snapshot.data.documents[index];
                  return new Row(
                    children: <Widget>[
                        Expanded (child:Text(ds['deadline'].toString()) ),
                        Expanded (child:Text(ds['description']) ),
                        Expanded (child:Text("\$"+ds['quantity'].toString()) ),
                    ],
                  );
                },
              );
          }
        },
      )
  ),
);

}

As you can see, I am using a StreamBuilder. However, I know that the subcollection is not going to change. So the question is whether using StreamBuilder is an overkill, because using stream to listen can be a waste of resources and access to Firebase. More importantly, the cost of using Firebase is calculated on an access basis.

To summarise, the question is whether using StreamBuilder is necessary. If not, what is the alternative approach which can help to avoid unnecessary access to Firebase.

Thanks.

Answer 1

StreamBuilder is necessary in apps where you need to fetch any update , insert or delete in a firebase collection ( in this case ). An alternative can be the FutureBuilder that fetch the data once and then you can wrap in a Swipe to refresh ( and the user decides when needs to see new data).