`$ref` no longer available, can't do `onDisconnect` calls anymore.

Version info

Angular: 4.4.6

Firebase: 4.6.0

AngularFire: 5.0.0-rc.3

Other (e.g. Ionic/Cordova, Node, browser, operating system):

How to reproduce these conditions

Prior to upgrading to v5, the following code worked.

let donuts = this.db.object(`DONUTS`);
donuts.$ref.onDisconnect().set(false);

Now it no longer works as I can’t access the $ref property from the result of the call to this.db.object(). Any ideas on how I might regain onDisconnect functionality? I didn’t see this change in the migration docs, so this caught me off guard.

[davideast]

Hey @aaronfrost! The query/ref is available on the AngularFireObject service, it’s just called query now.

let donuts = this.db.object(`DONUTS`);
// make sure to call .ref because you could be dealing with a query. Both Query and Reference have a .ref property to deal with this case.
donuts.query.ref.onDisconnect().set(false);

Thanks for flagging this, we’ll update our migration guide to indicate this.

[aaronfrost]

I agree with @jaufgang. The ref should be exposed differently, and that the proposed “solution” is more of a workaround, than a solution. Having to snapshotChanges and then subscribe, so that I can simply get a pointer to the ref is a lot of hoops that were’t necessary before. Since the API is being rev’d, this should be considered.